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THE IDENTIFICATION 



OF THE 



ARTISAN AND ARTIST 



THE 



Proper Object of America7i Education. 



ILLUSTRATED BY 



A LECTURE OF CARDINAL WISEMAN, 



ON THE 

RELATION OF THE ARTS OF DESIGN WITH THE ARTS 

OF PRODUCTION. 

Addressed to American Workingmen and Educators, 

With an Essay on Froebel's Reform of 

Primary Education, 

BY ELIZABETH P. PEABODY. 



BOSTON: < 

Sold by Adams & Co., 25 Bromfield St., Lee & Shepard, 

Patrick Donahoe. New York : W t ood & Holbrook, 

J. W. Schermerhorn. 

1869. 



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DEDICATION. 



TO AMERICAN WORKINGMEN. 



I have omitted one sentence of the Report of this great and impor- 
tant Lecture of Cardinal Wiseman's, because, though it may apply to 
European society, it does not apply to American. The sentence is 
this : — 

" The difference between the social tone of our day and that of a 
former age cannot probably be overcome. I cannot, therefore, pretend 
to hope that we shall see the day when the real, honest artisan, who at 
the same time shows artistic skill as well as industry, will be considered 
as raised thereby above the condition in which he is at present held." 

Had the great Cardinal, lived in America, he would not have felt this 
despair. It is the felicity of the constitution which protects the devel- 
opment of the American nationality, that it quenches no hope of a 
return (and with interest) of all that the past has intimated of the 
dignity of man. The events of the last ten years in America have 
taken away forever the disgrace of work ; and there is no motto more 
befitting every American than Ora et labora (pray and labor). The 
progress of science and its applications, by making slaves of the greaf 
insensible forces of nature, are fast vindicating to human beings the pre- 
rogative of all that work which men only, by their individual intelli- 
gence and skilled hands, can accomplish ; or, in other words, it is 
making all human labor to rise into the degree of creative genius, 
which is the intellectual image of God in man. Fine Art, that is, 
architecture, sculpture, painting and music, are now the forms of this 
creative activity ; but not all, for every form of human activity, even in- 
dividual formation of character, will become Fine Art when principles of 
eternal order and beauty, for the use and pleasure of men, shall be 
embodied in them. The life and manifest destiny of the American 
nationality is to make every man creative on every plane of his life. 

But, in order to accomplish this, men must be developed right from 
the beginning. Cardinal Wiseman declares, that, whenever in past ages 
artisans were artists, they were educated to be so. By the Greeks and 
Romans every production of human intelligence was considered a 



service done to some god ; and the church of the middle ages, after the 
revival of letters, made every work an act of worship; /. e., every work 
that only intelligence was competent to. In both cases, education was 
given in secret societies. But the common-school system of America 
can more than take the place of those secret societies, and should 
consider itself the immediate instrument of divine Providence to 
insure the legitimate honor and social position of an artist to every 
artisan. But for this consummation, so devoutly to be wished, our edu- 
cation must be reformed from the primary stage, as is proposed in the 
pages which are appended to the report of the Cardinal's Lecture ; and 
the American workingmen ought to demand nothing less of the Edu- 
cational Boards in all the States. 



tm 



THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE ARTISAN 

AND ARTIST. 

[In the spring of 1852, an association was formed by the Catholics of 
Manchester and Salford, in England, to raise funds for the education of the 
poor. The Committee, in aid of this purpose, invited Cardinal Wiseman to 
deliver an address upon some literary subject of general popular interest. 
Accordingly, on the 28th of April last, in the Corn Exchange, Manchester, 
His Eminence spoke for three hours, as follows. We know not that we have 
ever read anything so calculated to inspire the true sentiment of Art among 
the working-people. Those who are interested in the establishment of 
Schools of Design in our country could not ask a better presentation of the 
importance of their cause.] 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — I ought certainly to commence my ad- 
dress to you by thanking you for the extremely kind manner in which 
you have been pleased to receive me ; but I feel that I must not waste 
your time in mere expressions of a personal character, feeling rather 
that I shall have to tax your time and your attention to a considerable 
extent. I will, therefore, enter at once upon the proposed subject of 
my address, which has already been communicated to you by my old 
and excellent friend, the Bishop of Salford. And I am sure I need not 
say, for he already has well expressed it to you, that it is a topic which 
at the moment has engaged its full share of public attention, as draw- 
ing to itself the interest of all the educated classes, and it is in fact a 
topic connected with important questions, the solution of which may 
have to exert an important influence not only on our social but likewise 
on our moral progress. 

The topic on which I have to address you, then, is the Connection 
or Relation between the Arts of Production and the Arts 
of Design. 

By the Arts of Production, I mean naturally those arts by which 
what is a raw material assumes a form, a shape, a new existence, 
adapted for some necessity or some use in the many wants of life. 
Such is pottery ; such is carving in its various branches, whether applied 
to wood or to stone ; such is the working of metals, whether of gold 
or silver or brass or iron ; such is the production of textile matters, — 
of objects of whatever sort and for whatever purpose ; such is con- 



struction in its different branches, commencing with the smallest piece 
of furniture, and ascending to a great and majestic edifice. By the 
Arts of Design, I understand those which represent nature to us in any 
form, or which bring before us beauty, whether in form or in color. 

Now, these arts ought, as every one agrees, to be in close harmony 
one with the other ; but that harmony which I wish to establish be- 
tween them must be an honorable union, an equal compact, a noble 
league. There is not to be one the servant, and the other the master : 
each must be aware of the advantages which it can receive as well as 
those which it can confer. Thus the arts, for instance, of design, will 
have to give elegance of form, grace of outline, beauty of ornament, to 
that which is produced by the other class of arts ; and they in their 
turn have to transmit and multiply and perpetuate the creations of the 
arts of design. Now, it is agreed on all hands that as yet this com- 
plete harmony does not exist ; that we have far from arrived at that 
mutual application of the one class to the other which gives us a satis- 
factory result. It is unnecessary, I believe, to bring evidence of 
this. As we proceed, I trust that opportunities will present themselves 
of bringing before you authorities enough for that assertion. But I 
may say, at the very outset, that the report which is published by the 
department of Practical Art is almost based upon the acknowledgment 
that as yet we have not attained that application of the arts of 
design to the arts of production which we desire, and which is most 
desirable to the arts of production to obtain. It acknowledges the ex- 
istence of a necessity for much more instruction than has yet been 
given. It allows that for several years — thirteen years, at least — of 
the existence of schools of design they have not been found fully to 
attain their purpose, and a new organization and a new system has now 
begun to be adopted. No one can appreciate, I trust, more than I am 
inclined to do myself, the advantages "which must result from the multi- 
plication of these schools of design as applied to manufactures, and 
other great improvements which they have already begun to confer, and 
will continue, no doubt, still more to bestow upon the industrial classes. 
I believe it most important to propagate to the utmost the love of 
Science, the love of Art. / believe it most useful to accustom every 
child to its first rudiments, its elc?nentary states. I think, if we can make 
drawing a part of universal education, a great deal will be gained. But 
this, certainly, cannot be enough. I am willing to grant that we shall 
have a great improvement upon what we have produced in the form of 
Ari. 1 believe that we shall see better designers; men with better 
imaginations ; men who understand the harmony and combination of 



colors better, and who can give to the artisans patterns which will 
greatly improve every department of our industry. But, I ask, is that 
sufficient ? Will this bring Art up to what we desire ? This is the 
great question. This is the subject of which I am going to treat. It 
appears to me that there is a very simple mode of looking at it ; and it 
is the one, consequently, which I shall adopt. It is a question partly of 
experience. It is a lesson much of which history can teach us ; and I 
desire to bring before you such facts as seem to me to bear upon the 
question, and to enable us to come to a practical and satisfactory con- 
clusion. [Applause.] I will endeavor to state the question under a very 
simple, but perhaps it may appear not a very practical, form. 

There is now a great desire to form, not only in the capital, but also 
in all great cities where industry prevails, museums, which should con- 
tain all the most perfect specimens of Art antiquity in every age has 
left us of beauty in design and elegance in form. We wish that our 
artisans should have frequently before them what may be considered 
not merely actual models to copy, but likewise such objects as may 
gradually impress their minds with feelings of taste. Now, I should like 
to have the construction, the forming, of such a museum. And, in de- 
scribing it, I will confine myself entirely to one small department, — that 
of classical Art, classical antiquity, — because I know, that, for a mu- 
seum intended to be practical to the eyes of artisans, there is a far 
wider range of collection to be taken than that to which I will confine 
myself. Well, now, I imagine to myself a hall at least as large as this, 
and of a more elegant and perfect architecture. I will suppose it to be 
formed itself upon classical models ; and around it shall be ranged, not 
merely plaster casts, but real marble statues and busts collected from 
antiquity. I would range them round the throne so that each could be 
enjoyed at leisure by the' student. There should be room for the 
draughtsman to take a copy from any side. In the centre I would 
spread out a beautiful mosaic, such as we find in the museums, for in- 
stance, of Rome, a pavement in rich colors, representing some beauti- 
ful scene, which should be most carefully railed off, that it might not be 
worn or soiled by the profane tread of modern men. There should be 
cabinets in which there should be — but inclosed carefully with glass, so 
that there would be no danger of accidents — the finest specimens of the 
old Etruscan vases, of every size, of every shape, plain and colored, en- 
riched with those beautiful drawings upon them which give them such 
rich characters, and at the same time such price. And on one side I 
would have collected for you some specimens of the choicest produce 
of the excavations of Herculaneum. There should be bronze vessels 



8 

of the most elegant form and the 'most exquisite carving, and there 
should be all sorts even of household utensils, such as are found there, 
of most beautiful shape and exquisite finish. On the walls I would 
have some of those paintings which have yet remained almost un- 
harmed after being buried for so many hundreds of years, and which 
retain their freshness, and would glow upon your walls, and clothe them 
with beauty, and at the same time with instruction. And then I would 
have a most choice cabinet, containing medals in gold and silver and 
bronze, of as great an extent as possible, but chiefly selected for the 
beauty of their workmanship ; and engraved gems likewise, every one 
of which should, if possible, be a treasure. Now, if such a museum 
could be collected, you would say, I am sure, that so far as classical 
antiquity goes, — classical Art, — you have everything that you could 
desire, and you have as noble, as splendid, as beautiful a collection of 
artistic objects as it is within the reach of modern wealth and influence 
to collect. In fact, you would say, if you could not make artists now 
by the study of these objects, it was a hopeless matter, because here 
was everything that antiquity has given us of the most beautiful. 

Now, I am afraid, that, while you have been following me in this 
formation of an ideal museum, you have thought it required a great 
stretch of imagination to suppose it possible that such a collection 
could be made in any city of England. I will ask you, then, now to 
spread your wings a little more, and fly with me into even a more 
imaginary idea than this. Let us suppose that by some chance all 
these objects which we have collected were at some given period, in 
the first century of Christianity, collected together in an ancient Roman 
house ; and let us suppose that the owner of the house suddenly ap- 
peared amongst us, and had a right to claim back all these beautiful 
works of Art which we so highly prize, which we have taken so much 
trouble, and laid out so much money, to collect. Now, what does he 
do with them when he has got them back ? What will he do with 
these statues which we have been copying and drawing and admiring 
so much ? Pliny finds great fault, is very indignant with the people of 
his age, because he says they have begun to form galleries, pinacothecas ; 
that such a thing was unknown before ; that no real Roman should value 
a statue merely as a work of Art, but that it was only as the statues of 
their ancestors that he ought to value them. And thus that Roman 
looks at them as nothing else. He takes them back ; he puts the best 
of them, not in the centre of a room, where it may be admired ; but to 
him it is a piece of household furniture, and he puts it with all its fel- 
lows, into the niches from which they have been taken, and where they 



are, perhaps, in a very bad light. It is exceedingly probable, that, if the 
statues were not of his ancestors, he would, instead of allowing them to 
remain in the beautiful hall prepared for them, send them into his gar- 
den, into his villa, to stand out in the open air, and receive all the rain 
of heaven upon them. The mosaic which we have valued so much, 
and which is so wonderful a piece of work, he will put most probably 
into the parlor of his house to be trodden under foot by every slave 
that comes in and goes out. And now he looks about him at that won- 
derful collection of beautiful Etruscan vases which we have got together, 
and he recognizes them at once : " Take that to the kitchen : that is to 
hold oil : " " Take that to the scullery : that is for water : " " Take these 
plates and drinking-cups to the pantry : I shall want them for dinner." 
And those smaller, those beautiful vessels, which yet retain as they do 
the very scent of the rich odors which were kept in them : " Take 
them to the dressing-rooms : those are what we want on our toilet : This 
is a washing-basin which I have been accustomed to use. What have 
they been making of all these things, to put them under glass, and treat 
them as wonderful works of Art" And, of those beautiful bronze ves- 
sels, some belong again to the kitchen, others belong to our furnished 
apartments ; but every one of them is a mere household piece of furni- 
ture. And then he looks into the beautiful cabinet ; and he sends those 
exquisite gems into his rooms, to be worn by his family, as ordinary 
rings. And your gold medals and silver medals and bronze medals he 
quietly puts into his purse ; for, to him, they are common money. Now, 
then, here we have made a collection of magnificent productions of 
Art ; and, in reality, these were all the fruits of the arts of production. 
[Cheers.] 

Now, what are we to say to this ? We are to say that there was a period 
in Rome, and there were similar periods in other countries at different times, 
when there was no distinction between the arts of production and the 
arts of design ; but those very things, which to us now are objects of ad- 
miration as artistic work, were then merely things made and fashioned 
as we see them for the ordinary uses to which we adapt other things of 
perhaps similar substances, but of a very different form. For, in fact, 
if you had these vessels, you would not know what to do with them. 
We could not cook a dinner in them. We certainly could not adapt 
them to our common wants. But to the Romans they were the 
very objects which were used for those purposes ; and although 
now, in reading the old writers, and trying to make out the dreadfully 
hard names by which all these different pieces of pottery are called, 
yet, learned and classical as all that may be, when we come to trans- 



10 

late these high-sounding Greek names into English, we get very 
modest results, — pipkins and basins and ewers and flagons, and 
such homely names as these. [Applause.] Now, where is the Art 
there ? Is it that these were designed, do you think, by some man of 
great reputation ; and then that they were all carefully copied, exactly 
imitated, from his design ? Oh ! certainly nothing of the sort. The 
Art that is in these beautiful things is a part of themselves ; is be- 
stowed upon them in their fabrication. You may take the Etruscan 
vase, and you may scratch away from it, if you please, every line which 
had been traced by the pencil of the embellisher upon it ; and, after 
that, the seal of beautiful design, grace, and the elegance of true Art 
are so stamped upon it, that, if you wish to remove them, you must 
smash the vase. [Applause.] It is inherent in it : it was created 
with it. 

Then what I fancy is desired is, that we should bring Art back to 
that same state in which the arts of design are so interwoven with 
the arts of production that the one cannot be separated from the other, 
but everything which is made is by a certain necessity made beautiful. 
And this can only be when we are able to fill the minds of our artisans 
with true principles, until really these have pervaded their souls, and 
until the true feeling of Art is at their fingers' -ends. [Loud applause.] 
You will see, I think, from the example which I have given you, what is 
the principle at which I am aiming ; which I wish to establish. It is 
this : that at any period in which there has been a really close union 
between the arts of production and the arts of design, this has resulted 
from the union in one person of the artist and the artisan. 

Such now is the principle that I am going to develop ; and, in doing 
so, I will distinguish between arts of production belonging to two dis- 
tinct classes. There are those in which necessarily there is manipula- 
tion, — the use of the hand, or of such implements as the hand directly 
employs ; and there are those in which mechanical ingenuity is em- 
ployed in the art of production. It is clear that these two must be 
treated distinctly ; and I will begin "with the first, which affords the 
greatest number of illustrations and examples, in proof of that princi- 
ple which I have laid down. 

I will begin first, then, with illustrations from metal work. Now, the 
period in which there was the greatest perfection in this sort of work, as 
is universally acknowledged, is from about the fourteenth century, — 
1300, I think, to 1600, or at least after 1500. It is singular, that, in 
that period, five at least, very probably more, — but we have it recorded 
of- five of the most distinguished sculptors whose works are now the 



II 

most highly prized, that they were ordinary working goldsmiths and 
silversmiths. This is given us in their respective biographies : Ben- 
venuto Cellini, Luca della Robbia, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, and 
Baccio Bandinelli, all of whom were goldsmiths and workers at first, 
developed most extraordinary talent as sculptors. How was this done ? 
Can we conceive a person who is merely a workman, working upon 
such plate as is put before him, becoming a man of high first class 
character in Art ? There have been examples, but they are rare. But 
here we have five men, in a limited period, becoming most eminent. 
Now, what was the reason of that ? It was because the jeweler, the 
silversmith, who worked with his hands, was educated, not only as an 
artist, but an artist of the highest class ; and Vasari observes, in the 
life of Bandinelli, that in those times no man was reputed a good gold- 
smith who was not a good draughtsman, and who could not work as 
well in relief. We have a principle then established, that the person 
who did the material work in the finer works was an artist, who could 
not only draw, but model, and did the same with the metal itself • for 
that is the nature of that class of work of which I have spoken. 

Now, take the life of Cellini. Here was a man who originally was 
put to a totally different employment. His father had no higher ambi- 
tion concerning him than that he should become a great player upon 
the flute ; and he teased him during all the last years of his life because 
he had no taste for this, and would run after goldsmiths and others, 
and learn the different branches of their profession. He led the most 
wonderful life. He was to-day at Rome ; next day at Florence ; then 
he was at Naples ; then at Venice ; then in France ; then back again : 
that he could have done any work, in fact, seems incredible to any one 
who reads his life. And he did not travel by train or any public con- 
veyance which could take on his luggage. He traveled on horseback, 
each time, from Rome all the way to Paris. He had no luggage ; he 
was a poor man, and whenever he came and started his shop, he began 
by making his own tools \ and he worked with his scholars, who were 
generally young men that became themselves eminent in the profes- 
sion, in a little open shop, looking to the street \ there he himself ham- 
mered and carved and cast and shaped, and did whatever else was 
necessary for the work. He was an actual working goldsmith ; and 
the beauty of his Works consists in this, that they have the impress of 
genius so marked upon them, that they never could have been de- 
signed by one person and executed by another. There is as much art 
in the finish by his own hand, in every enamel, in the setting of every 
stone, as there is in the entire design ; nor does he ever dream of talking 



12 

of himself in any other way ; and yet how he went on from step to step, 
until at length he produced the most magnificent works, on the largest 
scale, in marble and in bronze ! He describes how he constructed his 
own Perseus. He went to buy his own wood, and saw it brought ; and 
when he was casting that most exquisite statue of Perseus, which is 
still one of the wonders of Art, he had every sort of misfortune. His 
furnace blew up, the roof was blown off, and the rain came in torrents 
upon the fire just the moment that the metal was going to be poured 
in. By his ingenuity, his extraordinary contrivances, he baffled, it 
might appear, the whole chain of accidents, and brought out, almost 
without a flaw, that most perfect piece of workmanship. You may 
imagine to what a state he was reduced, when, the very moment that 
the metal Was ready for pouring out, the explosion took place. He had 
no other resource but to run to his kitchen, as he says, and to take 
every piece of copper, to the amount of two hundred porringers and 
different sorts of kettles, and throw them into the fire ; and from 
these that splendid statue came forth. There was genius. [Loud 
cheers.] 

As a curious instance of the most extraordinary ingenuity, he tells 
us that on one occasion a surgeon came into his shop to perform an opera- 
tion on the hand of one of his pupils. Upon looking at his instru- 
ments, he found them, as they were in those days, so exceedingly rude 
and clumsy, that he said, " If you will only wait half an hour, I will 
make you a better instrument ; " and he went into his workshop, and 
took a piece of steel, and brought out a most beautifully finished knife, 
with which the operation was successfully performed. Now this man, 
at the time you see him thus working in his shop as a common work- 
man, was modeling in the most exquisite manner in wax ; spending his 
evenings in the private apartments of the Grand Duke, modeling in 
his presence, and assisting him with a hundred little trifles which are 
now considered treasures of Art. And so wherever he was, and under 
all circumstances, he acted as an artist, but at the same time as a truly 
laboring artisan. It was the same with others in the same profession. 
He was not the only man, by any means, whose genius was so univer- 
sal ; because we find him telling us repeatedly that the moment he 
heard of some goldsmith (and in those days a goldsmith was really an 
artist, as I have already said) who excelled in any particular branch of 
Art, he determined to excel him. Thus it was that he grew to rival 
the medals of one, the enamels of another, the peculiar manner of 
putting foil to precious stones of another ; and, in fact, there was not a 
branch of Art which he did not consider it his duty to excel in. With 



13 

♦ 

this spirit, is it wonderful that men of really great taste should have 
been produced ; men who, you observe, looked upon every branch of 
productive art as really a branch of the higher art of design ; and thus 
in their own persons combined that art> with the power of the tool ; 
were artists as well as artisans ? 

There is another celebrated jeweler of that time, whom he mentions 
frequently, of the name of Antonio Foppo, a Milanese, who is better 
known in the history of Art by a name which he received in derision 
in Spain, the name of Capodursa, which means a bear's face, and which 
he is known by, commonly, in works of Art. Cellini describes to us 
the processes by which he produces his works ; and they are so careful, 
and require such accurate knowledge of Art, that his knowledge must 
have been very superior indeed in the arts of design. As an instance of 
what was the latitude and the extent of Art, and how really a jeweler 
or goldsmith in those days was not above work which in our days no 
one would dare offer to a person of such a profession, we have a case 
recorded in the history of one of the painters, Pierino del Vaga, by 
Vasari, speaking of a very particular friend of Pierino's, a goldsmith. 
When the Grand Duke of Tuscany was building his palace, he gave to 
this man a commission to make the metal blinds for the ground floor 
of that palace (and it is considered a great pity that a work of so 
homely a nature should have perished, because there can be no doubt 
whatever that it was a work of exquisite beauty). So that, even upon 
what would be considered the lowest stage of common production, 
the artist did not feel it was beneath him to design ; not to give a de- 
sign to others, but to execute it himself. We have in the collections, 
particularly of Italy,in the palaces, evident proofs of the great extent to 
which this combination of various arts must have been carried, in works 
exceedingly complicated, extremely beautiful, and at the same time 
necessarily requiring a great deal of ability to execute. Those are the 
rich cabinets in which may be found, mixed together, work in marble, 
and in ivory, in wood, in metals, in enamel, and in painting, all com- 
bined together by one idea, and all executed by one hand, but of the 
authors of which it seems impossible to find any good trace. They 
probably were produced by those men called goldsmiths, and who, as I 
said before, could work as well upon any of those substances, and thus 
bring them harmoniously to form one beautiful whole. [Cheers.] 

Now, proceeding from what is most precious in Art to what is more 
homely, let us return for a moment to a subject on which I have al- 
ready touched. I have spoken of the beauty of the productions of an- 
tiquity in metal, which were found in the excavation particularly of those 



H 

two buried museums, as we may call them, of antiquity, Pompeii and 
Herculaneum. The collection of these is chiefly in Naples. Except 
where presents have been made to other countries, they have been 
jealously kept together. Now, these different objects have not been 
dug out of temples or out of palaces, but they have been taken out of 
every sort of house, — houses evidently belonging to the citizens, — 
and I think you may see that there is not one in that collection which 
does not immediately arrest the eye both by the beauty of form and by 
its exquisite fancy. Many of them have been engraved in the publica- 
tion called the " Museo Borbonico," the Bourbon Museum, the Museum 
of Naples ; and I think very justly the remark is made by the editor in 
the fifth volume, that the whole modern civilized world, however vast it 
may be, and however it may labor in so many arts and so many trades, 
does not and cannot exhibit even a small proportion of that elegance 
and ornament, varied in a thousand ways, and in innumerable most 
fantastic modes, which are to be admired in the remains of furniture 
found in Pompeii and Herculaneum, — two cities which occupied so in- 
significant a place in the ancient world. That is quite true. Now, 
what are we to infer from this ? There can be no doubt, as I have said, 
on examining these beautiful objects, that they have been for common 
use. There are scales, steelyards, which can only have been made 
to weigh provisions : the chains are most delicately worked ; the weight 
is frequently a head with a helmet, most beautifully chiseled ; and so 
genuine and true are these, so really intended for every-day use, that 
one of them has stamped upon it yet the authentication made at the 
capitol of the weights being just. This was a steelyard which was in 
the kitchen, and it was for the ordinary purposes of the house. There 
are other large vessels which must have served for culinary purposes, 
and of which the handles and the rings and the different parts are fin- 
ished far beyond what the finest bronzes that are made now in Paris can 
equal. What are we to conclude ? You do not suppose these were the de- 
signs of the Flaxmans and the Baileys of that day. Who ever heard of a 
great artist in Pompeii and Herculaneum ? And how can you imagine 
that every house furnished itself with what were considered exquisite 
and extraordinary specimens of Art for the use of their every-day life ? 
And then, where are their common utensils, if these are not they ? If 
these lamps were not what they burnt, if these candelabra were not the 
shafts upon which they were hung, if these vessels were not those in 
which they prepared their viands, where are those ? Were they carried 
away in the flight ? But the most precious would surely be carried 
away, and the commoner be left behind. Nothing of the sort. One 



15 

may see here everything is to be found ; and everything is beautiful in 
shape, and generally in finish. What are we to conclude ? Why, noth- 
ing less than that the braziers who made these things were able to 
make them. They came from the hands of the brass-founder ; they 
have been chiseled in the workshop ; they have been finished, not to 
be put up in cabinets, but in order to be knocked about by servants. 
Then here we have a state of Art in which the producer, the man who 
makes, who manipulates, who handles, the object of manufacture which 
he produces, was able to do what now defies almost our most superior 
workmen. [Cheers.] 

Now let us go to another part of the world, and come to a later 
period. Nuremberg, during the time which I have specified, — between 
1300 and the middle of 1500, — was a centre of Art, and especially 
in all metal work. There is an observation of Hoffman, a German 
writer, that Nuremberg was the city in which the artist and the crafts- 
man walked most harmoniously hand in hand ; but I think he does not 
go far enough : he ought to have said that it was a city in which the arti- 
san and the artist were the most perfectly combined. At a very early period, 
that is, as early as 1355, there was produced a piece of work such as is at 
this day the admiration of all artists. And what was it ? It was a mere 
well, a fountain in the public square ; " the beautiful fountain," " the beau- 
tiful well," as it is to this day most justly called. Now, this was made en- 
tirely by the designer, by the artist himself, Hofer, who united in himself 
these two qualities ; and it is acknowledged that in the treatment of the 
metal work, and in the beauty of the religious images which surround this 
fountain, but few steps have been made in Art since that time. And he, 
as I observed, was a mere workman ; he did his own work. At a later 
period, — at what is considered the third period of Art, in Nuremberg, 
— there is another remarkable piece of metal work ; and I am glad to 
find that in the last report just published by the department of Practi- 
cal Art, Mr. Smirke has introduced a letter in which he begs that this 
piece of workmanship, which he calls one of the most celebrated pro- 
ductions in metal, may be copied by casts, and brought to England as a 
specimen of Art. Now that beautiful production was of as early a 
period as 1506: it was made between 1506 and 15 19, and it is the 
shrine of St. Sebald, in his church at Nuremberg ; and no one who had 
seen that exquisite piece of work, — so beautiful, so elegant, as that no 
iconoclasm had dared to touch it (though I must say that Nuremberg 
had been preserved from the reproach of that error), — but there it is, 
in its freshness and its beauty, as it came from the artist's hand j in 
the centre, a shrine of silver, in which is the body of the saint, and 



i6 

around it whaf may be called a cage or grating of the most perfect 
metal work, and with statues of most exquisite workmanship. Now I 
do wish this to be brought to England, — a copy, that is, of it, — not 
merely because it will show what was done in ages that we consider 
hardly emerging from barbarism • not only what beautiful inspirations 
religion could give the artist ; but because it will show to those who are 
trying to raise the character of any art the true principle upon which alone 
it can ever be raised to what it was then. They will see the artist portrayed 
upon it, — Peter Vischer, — they will see him with his apron on ; they will 
see him with his chisel and his mallet in his hand ; they will see that 
he aspires to nothing more than to be a handicraftsman, a workman in 
metal, who yet could conceive, and then design, this most magnificent 
production of man's hand. [Applause.] 

Another example, something of the same sort, we shall find in a 
neighboring country. There is at Antwerp, likewise, a beautiful well 
near the cathedral ; and if you ask who it was that produced this, you 
will hear that it was one who sometimes had been known as a painter, 
and at others, under the more familiar appellation of the " Blacksmith 
of Antwerp," as a blacksmith ; and there is a piece of iron work which 
I fear that not our most perfect Works could turn out, — certainly not, 
nothing that could be compared with it. And Quintin Matsys was 
a poor scbool-boy, who, finding the heavy blacksmith's work too 
much for him, took to drawing and coloring little images of saints y 
to be given out in processions, and thus rose to be a painter and an 
artist, finding his first profession too heavy for his strength. But this 
iron work is a work of Art ; it is not a work merely cast in the lump,, 
and then put together ; but it is a work that required genius, that re- 
quired great artistic skill : it shows that the artist even worked in iron ; 
that a man who belonged to the very lowest branch of what may be 
considered the Arts — laboring in metal — was able, notwithstanding, 
to imagine and to carry out the most beautiful conceptions. 

Now, coming to modern times, do we find anything of this sort ? I 
content myself with referring to that last report which I have just men- 
tioned, — of the Department' of Practical Art. In that report there 
are incorporated letters from some of our best silver and goldsmiths 
upon the character of the artistic proficiency of the workmen. I will 
only read one, for all in reality repeat the same sentiment. "At 
present we seldom find an English workman who understands draw- 
ing. Not one of our English workmen has a knowledge of drawing ; n 
and it is said that, without exception, these men will not even go to the 
school. Attempts have been made to bring them to the School of 



i7 

Practical Art, that they may learn something of the principles by which 
the works in their branch of productive art should be conducted. 
They cannot be induced to go and obtain that information, though it is 
nearly, or entirely, gratuitously given ! So little taste, so little feeling 
of Art is there in our workmen now ! Can we expect they will pro- 
duce works that will rival those of ancient times ? For there is this 
broad, immense difference : in one, the artist was the workman ; now, 
the workman has only a degree of intelligence above the machinery 
which he uses ! He can apply those means which are put into his hand ; 
but can have no artistic feeling to give the last touch, or even to bring 
things to ordinary perfection. On the other hand, we must be struck 
with the difference, that in France there is much more taste, much 
more knowledge, much more intelligence, in the actual artificer : the ex- 
hibition showed, that, though we had magnificent things in silver work, 
and gorgeous objects in metallic productions, beautiful and splendid, 
yet, when you came to look at them with the artist's eye, you could not 
help observing the immense difference between our English produc- 
tions and those of France ; though, be it spoken to the glory of our 
English goldsmiths, they have both the taste and the generosity and 
munificence to bring over and to employ the very first foreign artists ; 
and it was thus we did produce some objects that stood in competition, 
not with those of the workman's rivals, but with those of his own 
countrymen. 

In Vecht there is an example of what the artists in old times were. 
He began as a cotton-spinner ; he became a manufacturer of toys ; 
then a button-maker ; and then he began to work with the chisel. 
His genius developed itself. He began to retouch and repair ancient 
armor, and then was tempted, seeing that these were things sought 
after (it appears with the most honest intention), to imitate them ; 
and he found that they were bought and put in royal and impe- 
rial cabinets as real work of what is called cinquecento. And then he 
imitated the shields, working exactly upon Cellini's principle, that 
everything, however small, is worked out separately, and then fastened 
together ; that nothing is cast, but that everything, to the smallest tip 
of the least finger, is hollow : and he worked on, and produced it by 
his artistic and careful manipulation. He began to work this way, and 
he found his silver work also became considered as ancient, and was 
adopted into collections of valuable antiquities. He then learned the 
power of his own genius, and he soon rose ; and, when the late revo- 
lution in France took place, he had commissions for works to the 
amount of 60,000/. And this was all his own work, the production 
3 



i8 

of his own hands. However, his losses were in common with many- 
others who had engaged in higher branches of art, and he has been 
since in this country : but certainly those specimens of his work which 
we had in the exhibition were not only most beautiful, but most ex- 
quisite; and many persons who took the pains to examine in detail 
some of the works in silver, which were presented by one French 
house in particular, — the Freres Maurice, — must have been struck by 
the high artistic merit of them all. And they all are worked entirely bit 
by bit by the artist ; and it was impossible they could be executed but 
by an artist who could model as well as draw, and who knew how to 
treat his metal perfectly, so as to give all the softness, beauty, and 
delicacy of the original model. [Cheers.] 

Now let us proceed to what may be concidered a higher branch 
of Art, and that is Sculpture. We shall find exactly the same princi- 
ple throughout : all the greatest artists of the most flourishing period 
were men who did their own work. You are probably aware — many, I 
have no doubt, are — at the present day, when a sculptor has to pro- 
duce a statue, he first of all makes his model in clay : probably a 
•drawing first, then a small model, then a model exactly as he intends 
the statue to be, full-sized and completely finished ; from this the cast 
is taken in plaster ; the block of marble of proper size is put beside it, 
and a frame over it from which there hang threads with weights : these 
form the points from which the workman measures, from corresponding 
lines, first to the models, and then from these which are ever the cast 
to the cast itself: and by means of the merest mechanical process he 
gradually cuts away the marble to the shape of his cast, and often 
brings it so near to the finished work, that the artist himself barely 
spends a few weeks upon it. This was so much the case with a very 
eminent sculptor, that it is well known he hardly ever had occasion to 
touch it. 

Now, that was not the way the ancients worked : they knew per- 
fectly well that there was more feeling in the few touches which the 
master-hand gives, even from the very beginning of the work, than 
there can be in the low and plodding process of mechanical labor ; and 
we find that those who were really exquisite sculptors in ancient times 
were also their own workmen- Vasari tells us of Orcagna, that he made 
at Florence seven figures, all with his own hand, in marble, which yet 
exist. Now, Orcagna was certainly a remarkable person. He was a 
sculptor, a painter, and an artist: and so justly vain, if one may so 
speak, of this varied character of his Art, that, upon his monuments or 
sculptures, he calls himself a painter j upon his paintings, he always 



19 

calls himself a sculptor. His paintings are to be found in the cemetery 
at Pisa. The most beautiful and splendid of his works is the match- 
less altar in the church at San Michael, in Florence, of which, I am 
glad to say, there will be an exact copy in the future Crystal Palace. 
This artist, now, whose work is certainly most beautiful, most finished, 
as far as we can gather from his life, actually did the work with his own 
hands, and carved the whole of the. ?narble himself. 

I shall have occasion to speak of another celebrated artist under 
another head ; and therefore I now will mention one who became very 
celebrated, and from whose life it is evident that he did the whole of the 
carving with his own hands, — and that is Brunelleschi. He lived at the 
period when Art was becoming truly most beautiful, — the period which 
just preceded the appearance, perhaps, of a still greater artist, but who, 
in some respects, departed from the purest principles of Art. He was 
the contemporary of Donatello, and they were both very great friends, 
and worked even in the same church. An anecdote related by Vasari, 
in the life of Donatello, will show us how truly Brunelleschi was not 
merely a sculptor, but a carver who performed the work with his own 
hand. He tells us that Donatello had received a commission to carve 
a crucifix (which yet exists in the Church of Santa Croce, under a 
beautiful painting by Taddeo Gaddi), and that he produced what was 
considered a very fine work : but he was anxious that his friend Bru- 
nelleschi should see and approve of it. He invited him therefore, one 
day, to inspect it ; which shows that the work had been covered up and 
concealed during the execution. Brunelleschi looked at it, and said 
nothing. His friend Donatello felt hurt, and said, " I have brought 
you here to give me your opinion : tell me candidly what do you think 
of it ? " — " Well, then," Brunelleschi said, " I will tell you, at once, that 
it is a figure, not of Christ, but of a peasant or a rustic." Donatello was 
indignant. It was perhaps the most beautiful specimen of the subject 
in carving that had been produced ; and he used an expression which 
became a proverb ; and I cannot help remarking how many expressions 
of artists have turned into proverbs. The expression in Italian means 
this: " Take a piece of wood, and make another." Brunelleschi did 
not reply. He went home. He did take a piece of wood. He said 
nothing to Donatello, and he carved his crucifix. When it was quite 
finished, he met Donatello, and said, " Will you come and sup with me 
this evening ? " (Now I narrate this anecdote partly because it shows 
us what the great artists were, — that they were not great gentlemen 
living in any particular style.) [Applause.] " I will do so with 
pleasure," said Donatello. " Then come along ; " and Brunelleschi, 



20 

as they went on, stopped at the market, bought eggs and cheese for 
their supper, put them in an apron, and said to Donatello, " Now, you 
carry these to my house while I buy something else, and I'll follow 
you." Donatello entered the room, saw the crucifix, let fall his apron, 
and smashed the eggs. [Laughter and cheers.] Brunelleschi soon fol- 
lowed, and found Donatello with his hands stretched out, and his mouth 
open, looking at this wonderful work. " Come," said he to Donatello, 
" where's our supper?" — "I have had my supper," said he: "you 
get what you can out of what is left." And then, like a true, noble- 
hearted, generous artist, he took his friend by the hand, and said, 
" You are made to represent Christ ; I, only to represent peasants." 
[Cheers.] Now, this shows, as I said before, that this poor artist car- 
ried on his own work with his own hands, shut up in his own house ; 
in fact, that, as Vasari tells us, he never allowed any one to see it 
until it was quite completed. 

There can be no doubt, that, among all the names celebrated in Art, 
there is not one that can be put in comparison with that of Michael 
Angelo ; a man, who, not merely from his follower, disciple, and inti- 
mate, Vasari, but even from jealous and envious and ill-tempered 
Benvenuto Cellini, receives constantly the epithet of "the divine." No 
man certainly ever had such a wonderful soul for Art, in every depart- 
ment : the cupola of St. Peter's, as an architect ; his Moses and his 
Christ, as a sculptor ; and his Last Judgment, on the ceiling of the 
Sistine Chapel, as a painter, — are three monuments which would have 
made the eternal fame, not of three, but of a hundred, artists in each 
department. [Applause.] Great, noble, generous, and though perhaps 
somewhat in his temper not amiable, yet sternly honest in all his deal- 
ings, he seems to have been the great centre, around which the Art of 
his period revolved. There was no one so great, so sublime in any 
particular branch of it, that did not look up to Michael Angelo, and 
consider him his superior. It is acknowledged that RarTaelle went into 
the Sistine Chapel, and saw Angelo's wonderful works, and changed 
entirely his style upon beholding them ; and it is particularly acknowl- 
edged by the writers of that time, that in every other department — civil 
engineering, etc. — he was considered equally supreme. Now, you would 
suppose that this man, upon whom commissions poured in every day 
for great works, would have employed a number of artisans to assist 
him ; that he would have had carefully prepared models, which he 
would have intrusted to skillful artificers, so as to lighten his labor. 
But no such thing. There is every evidence we can desire, that, from 
the beginning to the end, Michael Angelo performed the whole of his 



21 

own work ; that he began with the piece of marble as it came from the 
quarry j that, if not always, pretty generally, he did not even conde- 
scend to make a design beyond a small wax model, but immediately 
set to work with chisel and mallet on the figure which he had in 
his imagination, and which he knew was as truly lurking in the inani- 
mate block. Vasari shows us, in fact, from his unfinished pieces, in 
what way he must have mapped out the marble and done the work 
himself ; and that is why we have so many vast pieces by him unfin- 
ished ; either the stroke did not come out as he desired, or it went too 
far into the marble, and spoilt his labor. But so it is, that by far the 
greater part of those gigantic ^pieces which he finished, if not all, were 
the productions of his own hand, as well as of his intellect. 

When about seventy-five years of age, Vasari tells us, he used to be 
just as indefatigable with his chisel and hammer as when he was a stout 
young man. He had near his bedroom, if not in it (for he lived in a 
most primitive and simple manner), an immense block of marble, and, 
when he had nothing else to do, he used to be hammering at that ; and, 
when asked why he so continuously worked at this branch of his vari- 
ous arts, he used to reply that he did it for amusement, to pass his time, 
arid that it was good for his health to take exercise with the mallet. 
He undertook at that age, out of an enormous block of marble, to 
bring out four figures, larger than life, representing the descent from 
the cross ; and he had nearly worked out the figure of our Lord, when, 
happening to meet with a vein that was hard and troublesome, he one 
day broke it into half a dozen pieces. It was seen in this state by a 
friend, and his servant begged it for him. It was put together, and it 
is now to be seen at Florence. But Vasari says that it was necessary, 
in order to give him occupation, to get another large block of marble 
and put it near his bed, that so he might continue at his work ; and he 
began another group of the same sort. This was at the age of seventy- 
five. And Vasari gives us an interesting account of how he worked : 
he says he was remarkably sober, and while performing his greatest 
works, such as the paintings, he rarely took more than a crust of bread 
and a glass of wine for his dinner. This sobriety, he says, made him 
very vigilant, and not require much sleep ; and very often in the night 
he used to rise, when he could not sleep, and work away with his chisel, 
having made for himself a sort of helmet, or cap, out of pasteboard, 
and upon the middle of this, in the top, he had his candle, so that the 
shadow of his body never could be thrown upon the work. 

Apropos of this, Vasari tells us an anecdote which is interesting as 
showing the character of Michael Angelo and of his time. Vasari 



22 

observes that he never used wax candles for this purpose, but a particu- 
lar sort of candles made of goat's tallow, which, he says, are particu- 
larly excellent. Wishing to make him a present, he (Vasari) sent to 
Michael Angelo his servant one day with four bags of these particular 
candles, containing forty pounds of them. The servant brought them ; 
and Michael Angelo, who never accepted a present, told him to take 
them back again, — he would not receive them. The servant said, 
" They have nearly broken my arm in bringing them ; and I shall not 
carry them back." "Then do what you like with them," said Michael 
Angelo. " Then," replied the servant, " I observed, as I came to 
your house, that just before your door 4 there was a nice bed of just- 
hardened mud : I'll go and stick all the candles in this, and light them 
all, and leave them there." Michael Angelo said, " No, I can't allow 
you to make such a confusion as there would be about my door ; so 
you may leave them." This shows the homely and friendly way in 
which the artists lived among themselves. [Cheers.] 

We have a very interesting account of the manner in which he used 
to work at his marble, from a contemporary French writer, who says : 
"I can say that I have seen Michael Angelo, when, he was about sixty 
years of age, and not then very robust, make the fragments of marble 
fly about at such a rate, that he cut off more in a quarter of an hour, than 
three strong young men could have done in an hour, — a thing almost 
incredible to any one who has not seen it ; and he used to work with 
such fury, with such an impetus, that it was feared he would dash the 
" whole marble to pieces, making at each stroke chips, of three or four 
fingers' thick, fly off into the air ; " and that with a material in which, 
if he had gone only a hair's breadth too far, he would totally have de- 
stroyed the work, which could not be restored like plaster or clay. 

Going now to another part of the world for the same Art, we return 
to Nuremberg, and find a most magnificent piece of sculpture in stone, 
unrivaled in the delicacy and exquisite beauty of the work : that is the 
tabernacle in the Church of St. Lawrence. It rises from the ground, 
and goes up, not merely to the top of a very high church, running 
along like a plant, with one of the pillars against which it is built ; but, 
as if the church was not high enough for it, creeping far beyond, and 
making the most graceful termination, which has nothing similar in 
works of this sort. So beautiful and delicate is the whole work, repre- 
senting all the mysteries of our Lord's life and passion, that, for a 
long time, people used to»assert that it was not stone, but modeled in 
some composition. But it has been proved beyond doubt that it is 
stone. Now, the man who made this was a mason, — a common work- 



23 

ing stone-mason, — Adam Kraft, who built part of the tower of the 
church, and whose name is upon it as the mason who built it ; and he, 
until 1490, when he was fifty-three years of age, had never attempted 
to work as a sculptor ; and yet, before he died, he had not only exe- 
cuted many beautiful works, and among them a carved staircase in the 
tower, but this exquisite work, which is without a parallel. He has repre- 
sented the whole of it as supported by three kneeling figures, himself 
and his two apprentices, who executed alone the whole work. 

We see, therefore, that wherever there has really been grand or noble 
work executed by sculptors, they have been artificers as well as designers ; 
they have do?ie the work with their own hands, as well as imagined it in 
their ow?i fancies. [Cheers.] 

Let us go now to another department of Art. We have treated of 
metals and carved work in wood and stone. Let us now go to pottery. 
I have already observed that those beautiful vases, known by the 
name of Etruscan, were really made, originally, for domestic use ; that, 
consequently, they were made by the potter, and not by a fine artist 
only. This has been fully proved. It used to be thought at one time 
that they were all funereal, or of symbolical use, being found almost 
entirely in tombs ; but it has been proved that the greater part of 
them were for the common domestic purposes of the table and the 
household ; that some, indeed, were given as prizes at the games, filled 
with oil ; others were marriage presents, kept with more care in houses : 
but still they were the, work of the potter, and must have been produced 
entirely by hand. Pottery was so much considered as a branch of Art, 
that in early Rome, in the time of Numa, there was a College of Pot- 
ters : they were ennobled by being made a special guild. Any one who 
went through the exhibition must have been particularly struck with 
the elegance of forms which prevailed in all the Indian and also in the 
Turkish pottery ; and the common vessels, used to carry water on the 
head by the peasantry of Italy and Spain, have the same elegance of 
form which very little of our china, or of our finest pottery, can exhibit : 
and the question naturally suggests itself, How is this, that in many 
countries there should be such beautiful productions, and at the same 
time that we should not be able to give the same beauty of form ? The 
answer to this is given, I think, very correctly by Mr. Digby Wyatt, in 
his beautiful work on the late exhibition. He observes that "there 
can be no doubt that the reason of this beauty in the old pottery and 
in that of the East is, that it is made entirely by the work7nan himself." 
There can be little doubt that the most beautiful forms of Greek and 
Etruscan vases have been generated by a simple process of formation, 



24 

and by the refined delicacy of touch acquired by the potter during years 
of practice. The perfect outline of some of the commonest' objects of 
pottery from India, Tunis, Turkey, and the rest, demonstrate the 
methods by which contours equal in grace to the Etrurian and those 
of Magna Graecia have been produced. In the finer work of pottery 
among us, a distinct person is employed to design from him who 
makes the object ; the one makes the pattern, and a mould is then 
made of the same figure as is given. But in the ancient and oriental 
objects, the beauty of form is attributed to the art being literally in the 
potter's fingers ; and he acquires by the manipulation a fineness of 
touch, a delicacy of eye, which enables him to produce beautiful forms, 
which no one in the abstract could imagine." This is corroborated by 
the fact, that in the British Museum, in the great gallery where the 
Etruscan vases are kept, you will find two — and if you search the Vati- 
can and Bourbon Museum, and all the collections in Europe, you will 
not find two — perfectly alike ; there is a difference in them, which shows 
they were not produced by a model, but simply out of hand : and I 
have no doubt that the influence of this working in clay without a pat- 
tern is to be traced in all the works in metal . and in glass of the an- 
cients ; because, no doubt, the eye of the man who worked in bronze 
had been formed by his familiarity with the beautiful patterns which 
came forth every day from the hands of the workmen in clay. I find, 
too, it is mentioned in Pliny, that when a knight named Octavius, in 
the time of Augustus, wished to have a vase made, it cost him a talent, 
or upwards of 50/., to have the model made ; which shows that the 
clay model was to be molded before the marble vase was sculptured. 
In this art, then, the producer is the designer, the artist is the artisan, 
and hence comes perfect beauty. 

Next to this must be mentioned a very important branch of Pro- 
ductive Art, in which the Art of Design is always necessary to be in 
combination with the actual manufacture ; and that is china, or paint- 
ing upon pottery. The Etruscan vases are often simple, sometimes of 
one color, sometimes they have nothing of ornament ; at other times 
they have most beautifully executed, though sketchy, scenes of ancient 
mythology, or very frequently from the " Iliad." These are'done in a way 
which shows there must have been hundreds of artists who could do 
that work. Very frequently it was not a painter who did them, but the 
man who was at work on the pottery throughout ; and, although mere 
sketches, they are considered as containing the elements of very beau- 
tiful drawing. If we come to speak of the Art in modern times, a re- 
markable instance of genius persevering in its work may be taken from 



25 

the history of Bernard Pallissy. He was an artist,*but as a painter of 
comparatively humble pretensions ; for he tells us he used to paint 
figures, images, and so on : but in this he was an artist, to a certain ex- 
tent. He tells us himself, in the biography he has written, that in 1544, 
when there seemed not to have been anything approaching to orna- 
mental pottery, in France, he happened to see an Italian cup, which 
struck him as being very beautiful ; and he thought to himself, "Why 
could not this be produced in France ? " He set to work. He was a 
poor man, hardly educated ; but he had a great turn for chemistry, 
and was particularly desirous of finding out a manner of enameling 
potter}^, and especially a white enamel, which he at length contrived to 
make. He took his work to be baked in glass-houses, and found it 
completely fail ; then he set to work in his own house, and built a fur- 
nace for the purpose. He put his ingredients into the furnace : they 
would not set nor harden. He had spent all his money, and he gradu- 
ally pawned all his clothes, and burnt every article of furniture, to keep 
up the furnace, and pulled up the fruit trees in his garden, and then 
the very floor of the house, to keep up the fire. Still the work was all 
spoiled. When he went out, the people charged him with being a 
coiner ; he was ridiculed as mad ; and every sort of annoyance came 
on him. He persevered yet ; and, having found that his furnace would 
not act, he pulled it down, and with his own hands bringing the lime 
and bricks, he built another furnace, and then sat for six days and 
nights watching the fire. Then he got a little money by having a com- 
mission to make a survey, and came back to his work, and tried again. 
The mortar he used, however, happened to have some deficiency in it ; 
and, just as the pottery was going to set,-he heard a crack, and the peb- 
bles in the mortar began to fly, and broke his enamel. He set to work 
again, and put his materials again in the fire ; and this time there was 
a tremendous explosion : the ashes burst in, and the whole of his work 
was covered with black, so firmly set into the enamel that it all had to 
be thrown away except a few pieces, by which he made a trifle. For 
sixteen years he persevered in this way, and then was crowned with 
success, and produced the finest specimens of colored and beautiful 
pottery, such as are to this day sought by the curious ; and he received 
a situation in the king's household, and ended his days in comfort and 
respectability. [Cheers.] 

I could mention the beautiful earthenware of the sixteenth century, 

known by the name of " Raphael's ware," because it is supposed that 

Raphael himself did not disdain to make designs for common pottery, 

— pottery not to be used merely by the rich, but to be found in the 

4 



26 

common cottages, and houses of ordinary classes ; the most beautiful 
specimens being in the apothecaries' shops of Padua and Verona. 
There we have the employment of high Art in the decoration of a com- 
mon and ordinary object; for the pottery itself has no particular pre- 
tensions to elegance of make : but yet one of these plates, thick, heavy, 
clumsy, and coarse as they are, is worth a service of modern produc- 
tion as a work of Art. 

Another department is statuary in pottery, which presents some very 
interesting features in the history of Art. Its very origin is exceedingly 
interesting. Pliny gives it to us as the invention of a certain potter, of 
very ancient date, whose daughter, when parting with a youth to whom 
she was engaged, did what I dare say some of you have done, — made 
him stand before the lamp, so as to throw his shadow on the wall, and 
so sketched his head and face ; and the father, wishing to preserve this 
sketch, took some of his clay, and filled up the outline, and made a 
bass-relief of the countenance. That piece of. pottery, at the time 
when the Romans first became acquainted with Art, and carried away 
the monuments of Greece, was preserved in the temple of the Nymphs, 
at Corinth, as a treasure of Art, — as the first germ from which had 
been developed some of the most beautiful productions of that kind. 
[Cheers.] At the time of the Roman kings of the race of Tarquin, 
the inhabitants of Italy had arrived at such perfection in this Art that 
they used to make chariots, 'horses, and other representations of clay, 
so well baked that they could be placed in the open air, and stood for 
many centuries without injury ; and, in fact, we find them now among 
Etruscan monuments. The Romans must also have learned well how 
to paint them ; because we find it stated that there was an artist, whom 
Varro particularly mentions, who imitated fruit in pottery so perfectly 
as to deceive any one, and make one think it was real. 

But the most interesting example of this application of high Art to 
such products is what we find in the life of an eminent artist, and at the 
same time a potter, Luca clella Robbia. He was put, when quite a 
boy, apprentice to a jeweler. He very soon began to make things in 
bronze : he gave up mere small modeling, and began upon marble, and 
succeeded very well. He worked the whole of the day at his chisel- 
ing, and sat up all the night drawing. He was poor ; he was hungry 
and cold ; and the only means he had of warming himself at night was 
to put his feet in a basket of shavings, while he sat there drawing, and 
would not be driven from it. Now, there was an education for him, — 
beginning first with small work, and exercising his patience and skill in 
that way. [Cheers.] Sigismund Malatesta, the great patron of Art at 



27 

Rimini, was then building a splendid church, and he sent to Florence 
to find workmen to do the carving ; and Luca della Robbia was en- 
gaged for this purpose. He had at that time been a silversmith's ap- 
prentice, had executed works in marble and bronze, and was set to 
undertake that noble work at Rimini ; and how old was he when 
Sigismund engaged him ? He was fifteen ! And what pains and 
study must have been gone through in that time by the poor boy to 
make himself really an artist ! He succeeded admirably at Rimini, 
and came back and received a commission to work with Donatello, to 
make a screen for an organ, and a bronze door. After all this, he sud- 
denly discovered a totally new branch of Art, — modeling in pottery. 
He first contrived to manufacture his own clay ; he then discovered a 
mode of glazing it to such a perfection that centuries of weather do 
not in the least affect it. He then contrived to color it in the most 
beautiful manner • and all Florence, and every part of Italy, may be 
said to be filled with works of Art equal to anything produced in 
marble, and valued as high. He went on improving his art ; he began, 
then, tesselated pavements, and outsides of churches, which are most 
beautiful ; and then, taking to himself, not a number of workmen to 
mold under him, but two near relatives of his, who were also artists 
and sculptors in marble, and who had left marble to come to work in 
clay, this family carried on the same work to the third generation, 
when the secret of the art expired with the family. But in those three 
generations, till Pope Leo gave the commission of making the pave- 
ment of the Loggie Raffaelle, this family made an infinite number of 
original works of Art, executed by hand, colored and baked by them- 
selves. Now, there is a whole family of artists, in whom the productive 
and artistic skill were united. In our estimation we should say what a 
descent that was for a sculptor in bronze and marble to come to a 
mere potter ! But I will read to you Vasari's sentiments on that sub- 
ject, who, as the great biographer of artists, and who lived among 
artists, and was himself an artist, may be allowed to have a right senti- 
ment upon it. He says, " Luke therefore, passing from one sort of 
work to another, from marble to bronze, and from bronze to clay, did 
so, not from any idleness, nor from being, like many others, capricious, 
unstable, and discontented with his Art, but because he felt himself 
drawn to new pursuits, and to an Art requiring less labor and time, and 
rendering him more gain : hence the world and the Arts of Design 
became enriched with an Art, new, useful, and most beautiful ; and he, 
with glory and praise, immortal and unfailing." 

We are told by Pliny that it was in the time of Augustus the prac- 



28 

tice was introduced of painting the walls of houses. Temples were 
undoubtedly painted before ; because he tells us, that, when the temple 
of Ceres was falling into ruins, the paintings of Demophilus were cut 
away from the walls (as is sometimes now done with frescoes), and put 
into frames in order to preserve them. On one occasion, by the way, 
the city of Rhodes was saved, when Demetrius besieged it, because he 
feared a beautiful painting would be destroyed that was on the wall of 
one of the buildings. This painting of walls corresponded to our paper- 
hangings. What we do by putting on stained or colored paper, they 
did with the brush and the skill of the artist. The walls of Pompeii 
and Herculaneum are covered with most beautiful paintings, not merely 
ornamental patterns and arabesques ; but there is such a mixture of 
the mere ornament, and of figures perfectly designed and colored, as 
to show that there was no distinction made then between the. painter of 
a fresco and the house decorator : the artist was himself the performer 
of the work, and so beautiful is it, that we have hardly anything in 
modern times superior to what is commonly found on the walls of the 
private houses of cities, which were in a province remote from the capi- 
tal, and which had no particular recommendation, that we know of, as 
seats of Art. 

We have an instance, also, in modern times. Perhaps one of the 
most beautiful productions of modern Art is the painting of that gal- 
lery to which I have alluded, where we see that Raffaelle imdcrtakes to 
do what now one would never think of coi?imitting to the hands ' of any 
one higher than a common house-decorator. No nobleman, nor even a mon- 
arch, would think of asking the first artist of the kingtom to design the 
ornament of a gallery, scroll-work and grotesques, or mechanical orna- 
ment, which now would be done by a common process or a common 
hand. • But in a former age there was no distinction made between 
what we now consider the higher and the lower sorts of Art ; but the 
whole of Art was regarded as one thing : the greatest of artists con- 
sidered it was his place to make even the smallest work — which might 
be insignificant in itself — great and noble, and to stamp the highest im- 
press of Art on the commonest and most ordinary commissions that 
were given to him. [Cheers.] 

I will now speak of a department of Art which will interest you, 
perhaps, more than others, — Art applied to textile fabrics. There is 
a great difference between what Art can do in this department, and what 
it can do for those through which I have passed ; because the others 
are in their nature more lasting ; they are to continue for a time : they 
are worth, therefore, the attention and care of artists of the very high- 



29 

est class. The fashions of textile fabrics are perishable and fragile, — 
they are capricious and changeable ; therefore it is impossible to have 
the time, the leisure, and the same degree of labor, expended on them 
as is necessary to produce a great work of Art. I have read with con- 
siderable pleasure, and can bear testimony to the important suggestions 
in a pamphlet or lecture on this subject delivered in this city by Mr. 
Potter. [Cheers.] He is quite correct in his estimate of the some- 
what exaggerated ideas which may exist of the power of Art in con- 
nection with that which is not durable, and which in reality has its 
value, necessarily, for only a brief period. I agree, therefore, with him 
on that subject : but at the same time I accept as very important his 
concession, that, even with regard to that degree of Art which is com- 
patible with the nature of the substance on which it is to be displayed, 
we do not do what we ought to do, and that we fall short of our neigh- 
bors, the French ; or at least, that, while in that which is of secondary 
character we have put forth such perseverance and study as to have 
attained an equality with them, there is a point in that which is more 
delicate and perfect which we have not reached. [Cheers.] This is an 
important concession. It appears there is some reason why, in France, 
they can produce, even in printed fabrics, a superior and more delicate 
artistic affect than can as yet be giverw here : and I shall have to speak 
of the reason of this, which accords completely with what I have said, 
because in these works, which are not made absolutely by handicraft, 
but with the assistance of mechanical skill, there must be a distinction 
between the designer and the mere workman, — a man who keeps the 
machine in motion, and puts the work through it ; although, no doubt, it 
is necessary for the designer also to have a considerable acquaintance 
with the process by which his design is to be brought out in actual 
manufacture. I only wish to observe how the principle comes down 
here. You know the cartoons at Hampton Court, the most perfect and 
finished work of Art of Raffaelle. You would suppose these would be 
a labor of years : for they are all by his own hand, perhaps hardly 
aided by a disciple ; and nothing»can be more perfect than the outline 
and artistic distribution of the parts of the painting. What were these 
cartoons ? Simply drawings for the loom. Raffaelle did not think it 
below him to d?'aw patterns which were to be sent to Holland or Belgium, 
and thei'e to be executed in the loom by weavers of a carpet. This shows 
how the very highest ideal Art may bend without degradation to assist 
practical Art with all its powers and resources ; and where the union of 
the two in the same person cannot be got, then we have to think of the 
means by which the harmonious combination of both may be brought 



30 

to produce one effect. [Cheers.] While upon this subject, I am tempted 
to quote some beautiful lines upon the subject from one of our oldest 
but wisest poets ; one who calls himself, upon his tomb, " the servant 
of Queen Elizabeth, the councilor of King James, and the friend of 
Sir Philip Sidney," — Lord Brooke. Speaking as if it was considered 
in those days that the impulses of industry must be entirely regulated 
by the ruling power, he prescribes the duty of that in regard to the 
production of manufactures : — 

" To which end, power must nurseries erect, 
And those trades cherish which use many hands ; 
Yet such as more by pains than skill effect, 
And so by spirits more than vigor stand ; 
Whereby each creature may itself sustain, 
And who excel, add honor to their gain." 

Another remark I will read, which comes in the same passage, be- 
cause it seems as, written in that age, prophetic of what may be con- 
sidered the characteristic commercial policy of this day, — that policy 
which particularly owes, if not its origin, certainly its greatest impulse, 
to this city of Manchester. [Cheers.] He says : — 

" Now, though wise kings do by advantage play 
With other states, by setting tax. on toys, 
Which, if needs do permit, they justly may, 
As punishment for that vice which destroys, 
To real things yet must they careful be, 
Here and abroad, to keep them custom free j 
Providing clothes and food no burden bear, 
Then, equally distributing of trade, 
So as no one rule what we eat or wear, 
Or any town the gulf of all be made ; 
For, though from few wealth soon be had and known, 
And still the rich kept servile by their own, 
Yet no one city rich, or exchequer full, 
Gives states such credit, strength, or reputation, 
As that far-seeing, long-breathed wisdom will, 
Which, by the well disposing of creation, 
Breathes universal wealth, gives all content, 
Is both the mine and scale of government." 

[This quotation was much applauded.] Now, gentlemen (continued 
the Cardinal), I wish to come to some general results. We have seen, 



3i 

that so far, in every instance we have examined, wherever there has 
been real beauty and perfection of work, it has bce?i i?i conseqicence of the 
practical Art, and of the fine Art, which ought to work together, being 
most closely combined, and, as ?iearly as it ca?i be done, in the same indi- 
vidual, or else in the most perfectly harmonious co-operation. Now, 
we must watch very carefully whether the plans which are being pro- 
posed for artistic education — to be applied to production — will tend 
to combine these two characters better, or further to separate them. I 
come to the conclusion, that, if Art has always flourished in its perfec- 
tion when the two have been combined ; and if, on the other hand, it 
is acknowledged, that, at present, Art is not applied to manufactures 
as it might be, and if it is, at the same time, the clearly visible fact 
that our artisans and workmen are not artists, — I think I have a 
right to conclude that this separation of the two characters is the cause of 
our ififeriority, and that, therefore, the education which we are to prepare 
for those who are to carry productive Art to its perfection must be one 
which will combine, closer tha?i is now done, these two departments of what 
I consider one and the same thing. Now, is it or can it be so by the 
education we are now giving ? I observed that what I have said till 
now has been acknowledged long before by one of the greatest authori- 
ties in matters of Art, — that is, Dr. Waagen, the director of the Royal 
Gallery at Berlin. He was examined, in 1835, before a committee of 
the House of Commons on the improvement of Arts and manufactures, 
and he said that "in former times artists were more workmen, and the 
workmen were more artists, as in the time of Raffaelle • and it is very 
desirable to restore this happy connection." I was glad to find this 
corroboration of what I intended to say. He says again, "We have, 
then, to endeavor a connection between these two, the productive and 
beautiful Art." Now, I ask what class of Art was it which was in com- 
bination with productive Art, to make it the parent of such a beatiful 
offspring in every department ? // was not low Art ; it was not the 
mere knowing how to sketch an object from nature ; it was not merely 
linear drawing j it was not merely elementary Art : but it was high Art, 
and the highest Art. In every one of these cases the state of society 
was such — from what causes I do not undertake here to say — that it 
did permit the highest artists devoting themselves to what now they 
contemn and would despise ; and, on the other hand, there was such 
honor given to the product of industry, that, when it really had the 
stamp of beauty upon it, it rose of itself to the department of high 
Art. 

Let me illustrate what I consider the danger to be guarded against 



32 

■ 

by another example. When you go into a picture gallery now, and you 
see the portrait of a man, why do you care the least who that man was ? 
You see the splendid effect ; the countenance, which perhaps has not a 
beautiful feature in it, but which, by the noble expression, by the beau- 
tiful tone of color, by the majestic character thrown around the head, 
by the harmony between the parts, even by the accessories, is made so 
glorious that you can gaze upon it for hours. It may be a Doge, it 
may be a merchant, a soldier, or a prince ; you care not : you see 
there, not the portrait, but you see the painting by Titian, or by Rem- 
brandt, or Vandyke ; and the artistic merit so completely swallows up 
all the idea of personality of him who is represented, that, unless it 
happens to be some one particularly known, you never take the trouble 
of inquiring whom the painter represents. And why so ? Because 
then portrait-painting had not become a distinct department of Art. 
There, was no such thing then as a person who called himself a por- 
trait-painter, who thought he could produce a noble likeness of a man 
by merely giving a facsimile of his features ; but portraits were paint- 
ings by men who could have painted an historical painting of the high- 
est character, and to w r hom it would have been thought not unbecom- 
ing to commit the greatest artistic works imaginable. But in modern 
times the portrait-painter is an entirely different person, and the pictures 
produced by that class of artists are unfortunately of but lijtle 
value except to those who have a personal interest in the subject of 
the portrait. You know, too, that every one of those portraits, which 
cover such a vast extent of the wall of the Exhibition, will be trans- 
ferred to the place of honor over the chimney-piece in the house of 
the owner ; and, when his son grows up, it will be put on one side, that 
a portrait of the inheritor may take its place : and in the next genera- 
tion it will be transferred to some other more out-of-the-way corner of 
the house, until at last it will find a more ignominious position than 
Caesar's dust, stopping up a bunghole to keep out the inclemency of 
the weather. From what does this come ? Simply from the atteinpt to 
divide Art into parts, — to say that there shall be a class of men who 
can do a portrait, but who cannot do an historical or other great paint- 
ing. And you find a difference when some of the great artists of the 
present day — for there are some truly great artists in England — do 
put their hands to what is considered another department of Art, and 
paint the portrait of a friend, or of any one else : it becomes in itself 
a fine creation of Art, and it will not perish when the person is for- 
gotten ; but it will be known by the name of the person who painted 
it, and not by the name of the person who sat for it. In this way, too, 



33 

high Art, when applied to a lower branch, raises its cJiaracter. This is 
what ought to be the fundamental basis of artistic education. If we 
really mean to make more than improved designers or draughtsmen 
for mechanical work, we must have great artists who are not afraid to 
work mechanically at the same time that they are great artists ; we must 
have the feeling that Art commits no unworthy condescension in 
giving immediate assistance to the processes of production. The 
famous artists of whom I have been speaking were, as we have seen, 
men who worked at their business, and yet were not considered as 
working men ; they were considered as artists, and treated as such. 
And it is that, I am afraid, which makes the great difference between 
our time and theirs. Art, unfortunately, is not now considered so 
noble as to give rank and station, as it did in those days. I do not 
mean that the great artists, those who devoted themselves to what are 
considered works of high Art, do not receive patronage and counte- 
nance, and even high honor ; but we find that in those days such dis- 
tinctions were bestowed on the artists themselves in productive toil. 
There is not, perhaps, any part of the history of Art more interesting 
and beautiful than those portions of Cellini's memoirs which show us 
the manner in which he was treated : he used to go, when he pleased, 
to the pope to take him drawings and models ; he speaks of going in 
without even waiting to be announced, — going in the evening, after 
laboring all day in his workshop, as a matter of course. He was 
treated in the same manner by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and by the 
King, Francis the First : when he was working for him, the king used 
to go at any hour and visit him • and Cellini gives rather a character- 
istic anecdote, proving how very familiar such visits were. One day, 
while at work, and, as usual, rather in ill temper, an apprentice or ser- 
vant did something which displeased Cellini, and he roughly took the 
youth by the shoulders, and pushed him across the room. The appren- 
tice fell against the door, which was just then opened by the king, and 
he fell fairly into the king's arms. Such was the familiar way in which 
kings and great personages used to visit Cellini, and find him in his 
apron among his workmen. [Cheers.] But I believe, myself, that it 
is not patronage which Art wants in modern times. Patronage it has ; 
you. gentlemen, here, many of you, I know, would not scruple to go 
far beyond the mere calculation of interest, were it in your .power to 
raise, by your patronage, any one who gave evidence of genius, and 
reward him as he deserved. It is not patronage, but honor, that Art 
wants. [Cheers.] 

Now, speaking of the department to which I have just alluded, there 
5 



34 

is a passage worth quoting from Mr. Ward's book, " The World and its 
Workshop," on the difference between English and French designers in 
the textile fabrics. " France has studiously cultivated the Art of design, 
and advanced its professors to the rank of gentlemen ; in England, on 
the contrary, with some exception, it has been degraded to a mechanical 
employment, and remunerated at weekly wages. France has, inconse- 
quence, a species of industry to which we have no claim, — the pro- 
duction of design for exportation." Now, having drawn these general 
conclusions, we must come to some practical applications. The first, 
that we must avoid making too great a separation between that char- 
acter of Art which it is proposed, now, to impart to our products and 
the higher departments of Arts. I have observed that the separation 
of Art into two departments, high and low. seems to be dangerous, 
and it will, perhaps, prove fatal. You may educate a great number of 
good designers, persons who will make tolerable drawings, and with 
rapidity ; but the influence upon these which are considered the lower 
stages of art must come, not from below, but from above ; it is only Art 
in its highest department that gives the true feeling of proportion, the 
right sense of harmony, whether in color or in design, that gives also 
that sense and feeling of the adaptation and propriety of things to their 
purpose, which is indispensable. Any one must be surprised at seeing 
the extraordinary combination of the styles of different countries and 
times, in our works of Art, from the want of a regular artistic education. 
I therefore think that the first thing which must be clone is to try an 
education which will not give merely a great degree of elementary 
artistic power, but that, while we give what may be called the rudiments 
of Art to every one, if possible, so as to give them all the opportunity 
of developing a higher taste and power, if they possess it, we must not, 
in looking beyond that, satisfy ourselves with the idea that we can 
educate a great number of artisans to a middling degree of artistic 
feeling, in the hope that thereby we may influence the character of our 
manufactures ; but we must endeavor to combine the two, to bring 
down the high Art to mingle with the lower, in the feeling that it is the 
common interest and duty of artists to improve the productive arts, 
and to carry into actual work — not merely into design — the powers which 
they possess. [Cheers.] 

The evidence of Mr. Skene, before the committee of the House of 
Commons, is to the same effect. He and Mr. Potter, and every other 
writer I have seen, agree that we are not equal with the French in the 
more delicate operations of art applied to manufactures, and especially 
in textile fabrics ; and he gives this reason : " The system of France is 



35 

very different from that of this country, because in France artists of the 
first eminence employ their time — and make it a most profitable part 
of their employment — in pattern drawing, and they are paid very high 
prices by the manufacturers." This, then, accounts for everything, 
because it is the union of high art in design with manufacture that 
makes the French superior. The evidence of M. Coquerel, who is 
himself an eminent architect and designer, shows that a distinguished 
artist, who became president of the French Academy of Arts at Rome, 
and one of the first of his day, was employed at Sevres, in the china 
manufacture ; and he states, also, that of fourteen or fifteen French 
artists of the first rank, educated at Rome, with whom he was acquaint- 
ed, many were scattered through France assisting in the different 
manufactures, — finding the market for the highest class of artistic 
works so limited, and so full, these men, instead of sinking into despair, 
or committing suicide, as has been seen in similar cases, turned their 
high talent to the assistance and improvement of manufactures : and 
they are not thought to have dishonored themselves by doi ; or is 

it considered their superior education was thrown away upon them in 
qualifying them for the posts they now occupy. Why should it not be 
so here ? Let any one go into the exhibition of paintings in London, 
and look around the walls ; he will, perhaps, find only a small number 
of artists who can, with any hope of advancing themselves in the path 
to eminence, continue in what they may consider the highest depart- 
ment of Art ; and I cannot but think there are many in distress, persons 
who might be making an honorable livelihood, if they would apply 
their talents to what they would wrongly consider, perhaps, a degrading 
employment, but which is most honorable, — the improvement of Art in 
its productive department. [Cheers.] 

The second step, which seems to me of the greatest importance, is, 
to familiarize the people with Art. This I know is a very trite topic, 
and one which can hardly be considered to require from us much atten- 
tion. I know it is proposed to make museums in every part, and I 
think that excellent. But we must observe how it is that that familiarity 
with Art has been obtained by other people ; it has been, not so much 
by having places to which people were to go to see Art, but by render- 
ing it familiar everywhere to their eves. The ancient Greeks, proceeding 
from other considerations, which we, as Christians, could not for a 
moment wish to have considered, such as the public spectacles, and 
feasts, and ceremonies of Greece, filled their whole country with works 
of Art. Any one that will read the works of Pausanias, or the first book 
alone, will see how impossible it was for an Athenian to go ten yards in 



36 



any direction in the city without seeing some beautiful work of Art. 
On every side there were monuments, and statues, and temples, of the 
most beautiful workmanship and design ; and the people became im- 
pregnated with the sense of artistic beauty ; and therefore whoever, even 
a fhechanic, put his hand to any work, worked under the influence of that 
feeling. [Cheers.] In a later period, in Rome, there was the same 
plan of filling the public buildings, the streets, and squares of the city, 
with sculptured monuments, and with paintings, hung up so that the 
people could gaze on them ; and Pliny gives us a long list of paintings 
put up by different emperors : and, by way of showing what was thought 
by the Romans of our northern ancestors, he says, that among those 
paintings on the walls of the Forum there was one of a shepherd; and 
when a German ambassador came to Rome, he was asked at what 
price would he value that picture ? — which shows that it was considered 
by the Romans to be worth a high price, quite beyond a German's 
estimate : he, having so little idea of Art that he did not consider that 
question applicable to any possible artistic merit, said, " Why, I would 
not have the man, if he were alive and breathing, if you would give 
him to me," — he considering it was the value of the man, as a servant, 
and not of the picture, that he was to regard. In a later age, at Flor- 
ence, Vasari tells us how he and Michael Angelo, and other artists, 
used to meet together, and then go from church to church to see the 
beautiful works of Art in each, and then to discuss and criticise them. 
In the middle ages it was the Church, no doubt, which gave to public 
admiration the specimens of fine art, and kept them before the minds 
of all, and, in fact, made the people be artists. The consequence of 
this was, that, as Cellini tells us, when his statue of Perseus, after hav- 
ing been finished, was put into a public place, and when he uncovered 
it for the first time, "It so pleased God, that, as soon as ever my work 
was beheld by the populace, they set up so loud a shout of applause, 
that I began to be* comforted for the mortifications I had undergone ; 
and there were sonnets in my praise every day fastened up on the gate, 
and the very day I finished my work twenty more sonnets were set up, 
with the greatest praises of the work, and Latin and Greek poems were 
published on the occasion." So well had the Italian public learned 
how to appreciate a noble work of Art ! 

Now, I look forward with no small expectation to what will be done 
by the new exhibition which is preparing (this refers to the Manchester 
exhibition), because I know that great pains have been taken to collect 
casts and copies of whatever is most beautiful in every department of 
Art, beginning with the most remote period, clown to the present time; 



37 

and if it be really open to the public, and if, especially, it be open for 
some portion, at least, of that day on which alone the artisan can enjoy 
it [great cheering], then I am sure it will do more towards raising the 
feeling of the people for Art, and consequently towards introducing 
an improved practice, than any set of lessons or any teaching could do. 
A very strong remark is made by Dr. Waagen, before that committee : 
when asked if they shut up the museum at Berlin as they do in Eng- 
land, at certain times, to enable artists to copy, he says, " By no means, 
because I believe Art is far more promoted by the people seeing it than 
it is by any number of artists making copies.-" But it appears to me 
there has been a deficiency in the general education among us in the matter 
of artistic culture. I cannot but be struck with this when I see that 
among all the colleges and schools belonging to this country, so respect- 
able* and richly endowed, there is not one of the?n, so far as I hnow, 
which has made any collection or museum that 7night train the young men 
who are educated the?-e in a familiarity with Art. I do not think any 
college in either of our Universities, Eton, or any of the schools, keeps 
before the eyes of its young men examples of painting, sculpture, and 
of other arts of design, which might accustom them during their early 
years to admire and appreciate Art, and thus to contribute afterwards 
their influence to elevate its character. At the same time, I must 
observe with sincere pleasure that this is not the case with our Catholic 
colleges ; that, poor and unendowed as they are, there is not one of 
them which has not striven, at the same time while it has provided it- 
self with a library, far beyond the proportion of its means, if compared 
with what others have done, to provide also some works of Art, and 
keep them constantly before the students. [Cheers.] At Stonyhurst 
there are many beautiful things, carving, lapidary, silver work, and 
jewellery, especially for church purposes. Ushaw, or St. Cuthbert's 
College, near Durham, is another instance : the walls there are covered 
with paintings, many of excellent masters, and engravings of great 
beauty ; there is a museum filled with specimens of Art ; the sacristy 
of the chapel is growing with proofs of the encouragement given there 
to modern artists, as well as with carefully-collected specimens of an- 
cient Art. 

I may be allowed to revert also to the days which I spent in St. 
Mary's College, at Oscott. There, through the munificence of a de- 
parted nobleman, and under the guidance of the refined taste of the 
greatest artist of this day, because a practical disciple of all the arts, — 
Mr. Pugin [cheers], — there was collected a museum which woul 
have been worthy of a larger establishment ; beautiful specimens of 



38 

carving, of enameling, and metal work of every sort, so valuable that 
persons were sent from the department of practical art on purpose to 
make molds and copies of the specimens ; and almost all the cloisters 
were covered with paintings, some by very respectable artists, and 
others good copies. The students were thus brought up in familiarity 
with choice objects of Art, which has had an influence upon their lives 
since, and induced them to patronize and encourage Art. That collec- 
tion, moreover, was, in the most liberal way, thrown open to every one 
who chose to come and visit us ; we never saw any feeling of narrow 
partisanship, or exclusivsness of religious distinction ; the house used 
to be visited every day by parties of people from the neighborhood ; 
and nothing gave me greater pleasure than to see the young men who 
used to come there, and who were permitted to walk freely through the 
house. There was, at no great distance, a very considerable establish- 
ment for education, richly endowed, and having everything that could 
encourage the study of literature ; but it did not possess, as it appeared, 
a single object of artistic interest within its walls : and often did the 
students of that establishment come up to St. Mary's and roam freely 
through it, and receive every courtesy. And that was at a time when 
Oscott was considered almost the centre of a strong proselytizing ten- 
dency, and I know that personally /was much more engaged in contro- 
versy then than I am at the present moment ; and it was pleasing, 
therefore, to see that there was no feeling on the subject which could 
make it be apprehended as unpleasant for those young men to come 
to us. Bodies of those young men used to come to St. Mary's, with 
letters from their principal, couched in the most courteous terms, ask- 
ing, as a favor, that his students might be allowed to attend the estab- 
lishment, which could have very little other merit to many than as it 
was filled with works of Art ; and on one occasion he informed me that, 
when any of the students of his house were particularly well-conducted, 
and had especially distinguished themselves, the best reward he could 
give them was to send them with a letter to us, to come and see Oscott 
College. Now, it will give you all pleasure to know that this generous, 
liberal, and gentlemanly-minded individual, the head of that neighboring 
college, was — the Rev. Prince Lee. [Immense cheering and laughter.] 
One thing more, I will observe, is important; and that, — that we 
must not narrow the spJierc of Art. There is a tendency to do so in this 
practical scheme of education. I observed in the late report, which may 
be considered as a programme of the department of practical art, that 
there are prizes proposed for artistic designs in three different depart- 
ments, — for printed garments, fabrics for carpets, and for paper-hang- 



ings. Now, one of the conditions of the four drawings to be sent in to 
compete for the prize in all three instances is this, "the designs to be 
flat, not imitative, but conventional, without relief, shadow, or perspec- 
tive." Now, that is the mediaeval principle, and cannot apply to other 
styles of Art ; and you are narrowing the sphere of Art if you dictate, as 
a necessary rule of all designs in those three departments of productive 
art, that there shall not be relief or perspective in the painting ; that 
the flowers must all be of one color, and that there must be no shadow, 
and no attempt to copy nature, but that the forms must be all "conven- 
tional," that is, such as a rose spread out into four parts, with a point 
between them, and the lily changed into a fleur-de-lis, and no natural 
forms to be truly imitated. Now, it is folly to think of competing with 
French art if our artisans are to be educated on that principle, because 
the "beauty of design, where nature is copied, — where the flower glows 
in its own colors, — will carry the taste of the public, and I think rightly, 
in preference to a series of flat and unshaped designs. I think it is a 
wrong principle; and why? Artists will tell you that the carpet is 
nothing more than a background for the furniture : that the hanging 
of a wall, paper or whatever it may be, is nothing but a background for 
the furniture : and therefore that, these must be quiet and of a lower 
tint, with nothing brilliant, and no attempt at the representation of 
natural objects. Now, I deny this pri?iciple ; they are not background. 
The papering of the wall is in the place of the ancient painting on the 
wall ; and I do not see why, if you only avoid whatever may offend the 
eye, — such as false perspective, — there should not be all the beauty 
and glow of natural objects given to the pictured papering of the wall. 
If we are to collect museums, to put before our young artists specimens 
from the paintings of Pompeii, and then to tell them that these wall 
paintings are done on a false principle, because they are good repre- 
sentations of natural objects, and not merely conventional drawings, 
how are we consistent ? And, if you tell a young man who designs 
patterns for carpets that there must be nothing there which would not 
be, naturally, in such a position, — that there must be no sky or flowers 
there, — then you go to make it a mere pavement and nothing better. 
I should say that the real carpet should take the place of the ancient 
mosaic. The ancients thought it not amiss to represent whole scenes 
on their pavement, with sky and rivers, men and horses ; and Pliny 
tells us there were many celebrated men for this sort of work in Greece ; 
but the most celebrated of all was Sosias : and he says, among his 
other works at Pergamus there was a remarkable one which was called 
"The Unswept House." It was a representation which certainly does 
not give us a very good idea of cleanliness of domestic habits, — of a 



40 

floor on which all sorts of refuse had been left to lie about, fragments 
of meat, and the shells of crawfish, and everything which untidy people 
might leave after their meals. Such were the notions the ancients had 
of designs. I should, therefore, be inclined to fear that if we began to 
deal with Art upon a too confined basis, and on principles which belong 
only to one. period of the history of Art, and if we now insist on their 
being made the sole basis of artistic education, we shall produce 
cramped and narrow-7ninded artists, and never enable them to take ad- 
vantage of the great classical patterns to improve their taste. [Cheers.] 
In concluding, I think among the greatest errors that language has 
imposed upon us, there is none more remarkable than the sort of 
antagonism which is established in common language as between 
Nature and Art. We speak of art as being, in a certain manner, the 
rival of nature, and opposed to it; we contrast them, — we speak of the 
superiority of nature, and depreciate Art as compared with it. On the 
other hand, what is Art but the effort that is made by human skill to seize 
upon the transitory features of nature, to give them the stamp of perpetuity? 
If we study nature, we see that in her general laws she is unchangeable ; 
the year goes on in its course, and day after day pass magnificently 
through the same revolutions. But there is not one single moment in 
which either nature, or anything that belongs to her, is stationary. The 
earth, the planets, and the sun and moon, are not for any instant in 
exactly the same relation mutually as they were in another instant. 
The face of nature is constantly changing ; and what is it that preserves 
that for us but Art, which is not the rival, but the child, as well as the 
handmaid of nature ? You find, when you watch the setting sun, how 
beautiful and how bright for an instant ! then how it fades away ! the 
sky and sea are covered with darkness, and the departed light is 
reflected, as it had been just now upon the water, still upon your mind. 
In that one evanescent moment a Claude or a Stanfield clips his pencil 
in the glowing sky, and transfers its hue to his canvass; and ages after, 
by the lamp of night, or in the brightness of the morning, we can con- 
template that evening scene of nature, and again renew in ourselves all 
the emotions which the reality could impart. And so it is with every 
other object. Each of us is, but for the present moment, the same as 
he is in this instant of his personal existence through which he is now 
passing. He is the child, the boy, the man, the aged one bending 
feebly over the last few steps of his career. You wish to possess him 
as he is now, in his youthful vigor, or in the maturity of his wisdom, 
and a Rembrandt, or a Titian, or a Herbert seizes that moment of grace, 
or of beauty, or of sage experience ; and he stamps indelibly that loved 
image on his canvass ; and for generations it is gazed on with admira- 



4i 

tion and with love. We must not pretend a fight against nature, and 
say that we will make Art different from what she is. I will read you 
some beautiful lines, which show how our Art must be derived from 
nature. I translate them from the excellent poem of Schiller, addressed 
to artists : — 

The choicest blossom which the parterre warms, 

In one rich posy skillfully combined, — 
Such, infant Art crept first from Nature's arms : 

Then are the posies in one wreath entwined. 
A second Art, in manlier bearing, stands, 
Fair work of man, created in his hands. 

I believe the idea of these beautiful lines is taken from the anecdote 
which Pliny has preserved to us of the contest of Art between Pausias 
the painter and Glycera the flower girl ; she used to combine her 
flowers with such exquisite beauty, that they excited the admiration ol 
the chief of artists, and he did not think it beneath his art to copy on 
the canvass the operation of her naturally-instructed fingers ; and then 
she, in her turn, again would rival the picture, and produce a more 
beautiful bouquet still ; and the painter, with his pencil, would again 
rival her, and produce by his art the same effect as she had done with 
the flowers of nature. Let us therefore look on Art but as the highest 
image that can be made of Nature. Consequently, while religion is the 
greatest and noblest mode in which we acknowledge the magnificent 
and all-wise majesty of God, and what he has done both for the spiritual 
and the physical existence of man, let us look up07i Art as but the most 
graceful and natural tribute of homage we can pay to him for the beauties 
which he has so lavishly scattered over creation. Art, then, is to my 
mind, and I trust to you all, a sacred and a reverend thing, and one 
which must be treated with all nobleness of feeling and with all dignity 
of aim. We must not depress it • the education of our Art must always 
be tending higher and higher ; we must fear the possibility of our 
creating a mere lower class of artists which would degrade the higher 
departments, instead of endeavoring to blend and harmonize every 
department, so that there shall cease to exist in the minds of men the dis- 
tinction between high and low art. I will conclude with another beauti- 
ful sentiment from the same poem : — 

• 
The bee may teach thee an industrious care ; 

The worm, in skill, thy master thou must own : 

With higher spirits, wisdom thou dost share 

But Art, O man, hast thou alone. 



A PLEA FOR FROEBEL'S KINDERGARTEN, 

AS THE FIRST GRADE OF PRIMARY EDUCATION. 

BY ELIZABETH P. PEABODY. 

The identification of the artisan and the artist, which Cardinal Wiseman 
proves to have been the genera] fact in Greece from the sixth century, and 
in Rome from the second century, before Christ, was no accident ; but the 
result of the education given to the initiated ofc certain temples, especially 
those of Apollo, Mercury, Minerva, and Vulcan. 

In Greece and Rome, there was an aristocracy of races and families, each 
of which had its own traditions of wisdom and art, connected with the names 
of tutelary divinities, whose personality presumably inhered in leaders of 
the emigrations from Asia, who were doubtless men of great genius and 
power, and served with divine honors by their posterity, and the colonies 
which they led. 

This service, in the instance of the gods above named, involved education 
in the Fine Arts, just as that of Ceres and Proserpine taught the initiated 
of one degree the science of Agriculture, and those of a higher degree the 
doctrine of Immortality, — which vegetation symbolizes in the persistence of 
its life-principle and deciduousness of its forms. 

In the far East, the productive arts were early included under the word 
magic j whose secrets, as an ancient historian tells us, were reserved as the 
special privilege of royal families. 

Under despotic governments, the inspirations of Science and Art inva- 
riably have died out into formulas to be worked out mechanically ; as has 
happened in China. But, in Greece and Rome, freedom, though it only ex- 
isted as a family privilege, fostered individual originality. The^initiated, be- 
lieving themselves subjects of inspiration, would have that confidence in 
inward impulse, which, when disciplined by observation of nature conceived 
as living expression of indwelling gods, could not but be beautiful and true. 
High Art excludes the fantastic, and is always simple, — because it is useful, 
like nature. The identification of the artist with the artisan will restore it, 
because the necessities of execution control design when artist and artisan 
are one. The modern artist is apt to design with no regard to use or nature. 
He needs the check of the executing hand upon his impracticable concep- 
tions ; and will be no less a gainer therefore, than the artisan, by identifica- 
tion with him. Hay, in his several works, especially in the one on " Symmetri- 
cal Beauty," shows that the generation of the forms of the ancient vases rested 
on a strict mathematical basis ; and there is abundant evidence that the study 
of mathematics was quite as profound in antiquity as it has been since ; though 



43 

then it was applied to art, rather than, as now, to the measurement of nature. 
The wars and revolutions which convulsed the world in the declining days 
of the old Eastern Empires, and even of Greece and Rome, broke up the 
ancient schools of magic and art. They never, however, were quite lost in the 
darkest ages ; but preserved a shy and secret existence, and, at the revival 
of letters in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, were restored for a splendid 
season of about three centuries, by secret societies like the Freemasons ; 
and in many of the ecclesiastical cloisters. Then building and other me- 
chanical works again became high art. 

This adequate education, with its elevating effect on the laborer, both in 
respect to his inner life and outward relations, can be given now, and in 
America, only by making our Public Schools give the same profound and 
harmonious training to the whole nature of all the people that those ancient 
secret societies gave to the few, — a thing that is to be expected much more 
by reforming and perfecting the primary department than by endowing uni- 
versities ; though the latter are the cap-stone of the educational edifice. 
Even the late liberal act of the Massachusetts Legislature, requiring a free 
drawing-school in every town of five thousand inhabitants in the state, 
though it is a move in the right direction (and it is to be hoped that the work- 
ingmen will not let the law lapse by neglecting to call for its enforcement), 
will be of very little use unless the children shall be prepared for these art- 
schools in the primary department. It is the main purpose of the present 
publication to set forth that this can be done, and therefore ought to be 
done at once. Froebel's Kindergarten is a primary art-school ; for it em- 
ploys the prodigious but originally blind activity and easily trained hand of 
childhood, from the age of three years, in intelligent production of things 
within the childish sphere of affeetion and fancy; giving thereby a harmoni- 
ous play of heart and mind in actively educating — without straining the 
brain — even to the point of developing invention, while it keeps the temper 
sweet and spirits joyous with the pleasure of success. Childish play (as we 
have said elsewhere) has all the main characteristics of art, inasmuch as it 
is the endeavor " to conform the outward shows of things to the desires of 
the mind." Every child at play is histrionic and plastic. He personates char- 
acters with mimic gesture and costume, and represents whatever fancy inter- 
ests him by an embodiment of it, — perhaps in mud or sand or snow ; or by 
the arrangement of the most ungainly materials, such as a row of footstools 
and chairs, which become a railroad train to him at his " own sweet will." 
Everybody conversant with children knows how easily they will " make 
believe," as they call it, out of any materials whatever ; and are most 
amused when the materials to be transformed by their personifying and 
symbolizing thought are few. For so much do children enjoy the exercise 
of imagination, that they prefer simple primitive forms, which they can 
" make believe " to be first one thing and then another, to elaborately 
carved columns, and such like. There is nothing in life more charming to 
a spectator, than to observe this shaping fancy of children, scorning the 



44 

bounds of possibility, as it were. But children themselves enjoy their imagi- 
nations still more, when they find it possible to satisfy their causative in- 
.stinct by really making something useful or pretty. 

It was Froebel's wisdom, instead of repressing, to accept this natural 
activity of^ childhod, as a hint of Divine Providence, and to utilize its spon- 
taneous play for education. And, in doing so, he takes out of school disci- 
pline that element of baneful antagonism which it is so apt to excite, and 
which it is such a misfortune should ever be excited in the young towards 
the old. 

The divine impulse of activity is never directly opposed in the kindergar- 
ten, but accepted, and guided into beautiful production, according to the laws 
of creative order. These the educator must study out in nature, and geni- 
ally present to the child, whom he will find docile to the guidance of his 
play to an issue more successful than it is possible for him to attain in his 
own ignorance. 

Intellect is developed by the appreciation of individual forms and those 
relations to each other which are agreeable to the eye. There are forms that 
never tire. In the work of Hay, to which allusion has been made, it is shown 
that every ancient vase is a complex of curves that belong to one form 
or to three forms or to five forms ; but all vases whose curves belong 
to one form are the most beautiful. These ground forms are of petals of 
flowers ; and the mathematical appreciation of them is very interesting, 
showing that the forces of nature act to produce a certain symmetry, as has 
been lately demonstrated in snowflakes and crystals, that have been respec- 
tively called "the lilies of the sky, and the lilies of the rocks," — for the 
lily is the most symmetrical of flowers. Froebel's exercises on blocks, sticks, 
curved wires, colors, weaving of patterns, pricking, sewing with colored 
threads, and drawing, lead little children of three years' old to create series 
of , by a simple placing of opposites, which involves the first principle 

of all design, polarity. By boxes of triangles, equilateral, isosceles, right- 
angled, or scalene, the foundations of mathematical thought may be laid to 
the senses. Before children are old enough for the abstract operations of 
simple arithmetic, they may know geometry in the concrete. And, in these 
various games of the generation of form, the greatest accuracy of eye, and 
delicacy and quickness of manipulation are insensibly acquired, precluding 
all clumsiness and awkwardness. 

Froebel's exercises with blocks, sticks, curved wires, triangles, which 
lead the children to make an ever-varying symmetry by simply placing oppo- 
sites, are concrete mathematics, which becomes the very law of their thoughts. 
T..^ unii. s developed by appreciated forms and their combinations. The 
same* law of polarity is followed in the weaving of colored papers, where 
harmony of colors is added to symmetrical beauty ; and from the moment 
when a child can hold the pencil, and draw a line a quarter of an inch long, 
he can also make symmetrical forms upon a slate or paper squared in 
eighths of an inch. 

LOfC, • 



-> 



45 

But to conduct such education as this is a great art, founded on the deep- 
est science both within and without the human soul ; and therefore, pre- 
liminary to its \peing undertaken, there must be a special training of the 
kindergarten teacher. Froebel never established a kindergarten anywhere 
that he did not also establish normal training for young women, who were to 
supervise the children at their play and work, so as to make these guided 
exercises of the limbs and hands a moral, artistic, and intellectual educa- 
tion, all in one. 

For moral culture, it is necessary that the children produce things, and 
play with each other, from self-forgetful motives of gratitude to parents and 
affection for their companions, or a gentle sympathy for the unfortunate. 
Moral culture cannot be given in a didactic manner. Sentiment becomes 
selfish weakness unless it is embodied in disinterested action. Even suc- 
cessful and happy play involves mutual consideration. It is necessary that 
children should act from a motive leading them from within out of them- 
selves. There is no way to learn goodness ,but to be practically good. 
Froebel would not have children make things to hoard, or merely to ex- 
hibit their power, and stimulate their vanity ; but to give away to some 
object of their affection or respect or pity. Before anything is done, the 
question always arises, Who is to be made happier or better by it ? They 
can be kept busy the whole year in providing gifts for all their friends' birth- 
days, new-years-day, and the Christmas-tree ; and, especially, the poor and 
sick are remembered. Thus their activity is disciplined by their hearts, 
which supply the motive, no less than by their intellect, which supplies — or 
at least accepts — the law according to which the thing is made. They be- 
come intellectual by learning that there is always a law as the innermost 
secret of every object of nature and art. The rule involving the law is sug- 
gested in words at each step of the procedure, and repeated until the idea 
of the law is caught. As crude material and simple ground-form is varied 
into varieties of beauty, they get a knowledge deeper than words can con- 
vey of the substantiality of law, seeing A tu be no less a factor of the \thing 
than the material out of which it is made. In its turn, the material itself 
becomes the subject of an object lesson, not only as to its structure, but its 
origin ; and this, when considered in its use, or the delight it gives, leads 
the mind inevitably to the spiritual Fountain of all good things. The child's 
own active heart witnesses to a heavenly Father, and precludes any neces- 
sity for didactic teaching on that point. It is only neccessary to refer to 
Him when the little heart is full of generous love, and the little mind is 
realizing that its own thought is an indispensable factor of the thing done. 
Thus art-education is religious ; because art is the image in man of God's 
creativeness. It has been profoundly said, that, if science is irreligious in 
its effect, because it deals only in appearances and its method is analysis 
which murders, art is necessary to strike the balance in education, because 
it deals in substances, and not only produces, but makes alive by giving ex- 
pression to matter. Since what makes the crude and unformed material, 



46 

which the child uses a thing of beauty or use, is the immaterial aesthetic force 
within him, which applies the law (itself an immaterial entity), he necessarily 
infers and appreciates that the universe as a whole is the guarantee of an 
immaterial Creator who loves its intelligent denizens. 

It is impossible for a kindergarten to be carried on by a teacher who does 
not understand this constitution of human nature on the one hand, and the 
laws of the universe, in some degree, upon the other. No mechanical im- 
itation, and no patterns. are permitted; but the children are led on to act 
from their own thoughts by first acting from the teacher's suggestion or di- 
rection of their thoughts. It is astonishing to most persons to see how, 
almost immediately, they begin to invent new applications of the laws given. 
Originality is fostered by questions leading them to give an account of how 
they produce effects, which prevents destructive tendencies, and gives > clear- 
ness of intellectual consciousness ; and no strain is put upon the brain, be- 
cause the child is always kept within the child's world and made of ability 
there. In the moral sphere, also, questioning is a better mode of sugges- 
tion than precept : unless there is a certain freedom of feeling, and virtue 
preserves a certain spontaneity, hypocrisy may be superinduced. Children 
love others as naturally and well as they love themselves, if not better ; and 
love has its own various creative play and its own modesty, which should be 
sacredly respected. Wake up the heart and mind, and moral dictation will 
be as superfluous as it is pernicious : and, above all things, children should 
not be led into professions, or be praised for goodness ; but goodness should 
be presumed as of course. 

In short, kindergarten education is integral, resulting in practical re- 
ligion, because it gives intelligence and sentiment to the conception of God 
and his providence, and prevents that precocity which is always a one- 
sided, deforming, and, ultimately, a weakening development. It is greatly 
in contrast with the ordinary primary-school teaching, which generally begins 
by antagonizing all spontaneous life (keeping children still, as it is called), in 
order to make them passive recipients of knowledge having no present rela- 
tion with the wants of their minds or hearts. 

But if the training which fits for kindergarten teaching not only involves 
knowledge of the sciences of outward nature to a considerable extent, but 
a study of the philosophy of human nature also ; yet it is such a philoso- 
phy as any fairly cultivated, genial-hearted young woman, of average intel- 
lect, is capable of receiving from one already an adept in it ; for it is the 
universal motherly instinct, appreciated by the intellect, and followed out to 
its highest issues. Froebel's philosophy and art is just the highest finish 
to any woman's education, whether she is to keep a kindergarten or not. 
Frobel considered women to be the divinely appointed educators of children 
for the first seven years of their lives at least, until they become fully con- 
scious of their power of thought, and know how to apply thought for effect. 
For two or three years, their place is in the nursery, whose law is acknowl- 
edged io be amusement. The nursery method of sympathetic supervision of 



47 

children's spontaneity (which never should be left to uninstructed nurses) is 
simply continued in the kindergarten, where symbolic plays, for general 
bodily exercise, and the "occupations," as the quieter games of production 
are called, suggest conversations which are the first object lessons. It is 
quite enough intellectual work for children under seven years of age, to learn 
to express their thoughts and impressions in appropriate words ; to sing by 
rote the songs which describe their plays ; to become skillful in the manipu- 
lations the occupations involve ; with such objective knowledge as is directly 
connected with the materials used. They can then go, at seven years old, 
from the kindergarten to the common primary school, with habits of docility, 
industry and order already acquired ; wide-awake senses and attention ; 
tempers not irritated by stupid and unreasonable repressions of their nature, 
and wills unperverted, and reasonably obedient. Is it not plain that, thus 
educated, they will easily learn to read ? and the knowledge acquired from 
books will stimulate production in large spheres of life, and the love of labor 
will not be in danger of dying out when the progressive rise into " the per- 
fect, good, and fair " is guaranteed by productions that shall bring the life 
which is to come into that which now is. 

The immoral — some go so far as to call it the demoralizing — influence 
of our public schools, which now at best sharpen the wits, and give means 
of power to do evil as well as good, has called attention of late to the char- 
acter of state education, and the necessity of making it industrial, if only to 
save the masses of children from the temptations that now assail those who 
need to earn their living at once, but who leave school at fourteen or fifteen 
years of age unskilled in any species of labor. The only way to elevate the 
laborer to equal social position with the professional man, or even to self-re- 
spect, is to make labor spontaneous and attractive ; but to make industry 
artistic is the only way to make it attractive, and supersede that spirit 01 
gambling in business and politics which so fearfully weakens and corrupts 
our national character, and threatens the liberties which rest on truth and 
justice. 

Finally, unless the right thing is done at once, and this reform of the 
fundamental education is initiated by competent teachers, a very great evil 
will arise. Already children's schools, assuming the name of kindergarten, 
— sometimes innocently, because ignorantly, — are growing up at different 
points in this country, which necessarily disgrace the principle of Froebel, 
who worked out by a whole lifetime of experimenting, the true processes ot 
the first stages of human education. These pseudo-kindergartens are a 
mere alternation of the old routine with plays and imitative working by pat- 
terns, making children frivolous, or little machines, or else disgusting them ; 
for, in proportion to their natural abounding life, children tire of what is 
mechanical. 

The first thing we have to do, then, is to train teachers in Froebel's sci- 
ence and art. There is one training school now, at 127 Charles Street, Bos- 
ton, kept by Mrs. and Miss Kriege, educated in the best training school in 



4 8 



LIBRARY OF C0N3RESS 



IIIIIHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIHIIIIIIIIIIIUHIII"""'" ^ 

013 495 471 1 S 



the world, — that of Baroness M arenholtz-Bulow of Berlin, who is one of 
Froebel's personal disciples and apostles. It is to be hoped that the city 
or State will make this a public institution. Another pupil of Froebel him- 
self, Prof. Weibe, from Altona, Schleswig Holstein, where he left a kinder- 
garten that he founded many years since, in order to bring the system to 
America, projects founding a training school, with its model kindergarten, in 
Springfield, Mass. And a very superior expert and adept in the Froebel 
philosophy, now engaged in Lubec, Germany, and perfectly skilled in the 
English language, might be induced, by adequate compensation, to come 
and found another in some more southerly or western state. If there could 
be raised by private donations, or public appropiation, a loan-fund to enable 
many young women who ardently desire this education to attend the private 
school of Madame Kriege,'in a year we might have enough trained teachers 
to open schools all over the country ; and effectually commence that radical 
reform of primary education which shall ultimate in the Identification of the 
'Artist and Artisan. •" What is well begun is half done." 



01 



Conservation Resources 
Lig-Free® Type I 
Ph 8.5, Buffered 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 495 471 1 



